A Matter of Time
by MidKnight Rider
Summary: This story is really about Kirk and Spock and what binds them together. I wanted a story that celebrated every member of the Enterprise' crew and the incredible heroism I have always expected they are capable of.
1. Chapter 1

**A Matter of Time**

**This is another in story in my AU, involving my original character, Daphne. For the purpose of the story, it's ony necessary to know that in my ST universe, Daphne is Kirk's half sister and Spock's wife. This story is really about Kirk and Spock and what binds them together. I wanted a story that celebrated every member of the Enterprise' crew and the incredible heroism I have always expected they are capable of.**

Daphne lay in his arms, cocooned in warmth, satiated, drifting in and out of consciousness. She should have been exhausted enough to fall into a deep sleep. Since Spock had taken her to their quarters some time ago, he had taken her up and over the precipice into ecstasy a half a dozen times that she could remember. There may have been more that simply overlapped. He had joined with her body, mind and soul with an abandon and passion she had rarely encountered in the year they had been married. The bond between them had flared like a new sun, as if he was falling in love with her all over again.

In spite of her utter helplessness in his control, something in her soul was whispering urgently. She had given herself to him, as always, with utter trust. But the last few hours had been intense, even for them. He had dimmed all the lights, even the meditation flame. The fact that he was still holding her in the velvety darkness, his hand formed into the familiar V tracing slow lines on her body as if to map her, his skin burning against hers, was also more than unusual. The one time she had tried to roll over he had held onto her as if she might suddenly vanish.

Vulcans were raised in a society that had evolved over millennia in conditions that had made them extremely protective of their bondmates. Something had happened in the course of the previous day to trigger Spock's overprotective nature.

She just didn't know what.

She knew that Alpha Shift had begun with the discovery of a floating derelict. Scans had revealed no signs of life and the Captain had brought the ship on board, in the cargo bay on Deck Twenty-Two, for further investigation.

She knew that Spock and the Captain had been in the cargo bay with it for only a short time when they had unceremoniously abandoned the room, opened the bay doors and allowed the entire ship to be blown back out into space. Kirk had then ordered Chekhov to lay in a course for the nearest Star base and take them there at the highest possible speed.

Kirk and Spock had arrived on the Bridge looking as if the demons from the deepest Abyss were chasing them. Even Spock had appeared unusually rattled. He had monitored their distance from the derelict ship for a short time and then abruptly asked her to accompany him. Without a word of explanation they had arrived in at their quarters.

Since then, they had not left the bed.

Daphne shifted closer to him, reassuringly. He was solid and ardent, unshakable as always. But something still teased at the edges of her consciousness like bees humming in a jar.

He still had not explained the odd "winking out" of their mind link, which had ostensibly been the reason for bringing her to their quarters.

She reached up to trace a long slow line down the side of his face to his neck, turned her hand over so that the back of it stroked down his arm. His wandering hand slid teasingly over her hip and down over her thigh.

Daphne shivered.

"Are you trying to arouse me again?" she asked.

His voice was an erotic whisper in the dark, "Do you doubt that I can?"

She stretched and all but purred, settling against him more intimately. "I don't doubt you can set stone on fire…. And I am not stone."

Still, she reached for his hand and mirrored it with hers, making him pause.

"You should just tell me," she said finally, pitching her voice to Vulcan hearing. "Whatever it is that happened, it will not make me leave you or love you less."

There may have been the slightest hitch in his breathing. It seemed that he froze for a moment. Then his hand left hers and stroked over her hair. The tousled silk, robbed of its spun gold color by the dark, was still heavy and sensual to the touch. He played with the part and slide of it for a moment, the ripple of curl winding through his fingers.

He had not meant to make love to her. His only intention in bringing her back to their quarters had been to explain the events that had transpired. But then the door had swished closed behind them and she had gazed up at him with those golden eyes, wide and vulnerable, trusting, accepting.

Vibrant and alive…..

To be fair, she had initiated the kiss; her empathic senses had picked up instantly on his mood. Her mouth had moved slowly, tentatively under his at first, before it had deepened and deepened until the desperate need to breathe had finally broken them apart. With deliberate slowness, he had slipped two fingers over her palm and the back of her hand, around her wrist where her human pulse beat slowly with desire. The link between them sparked like shattered starlight and need had almost overwhelmed him.

It had been a long time since they had left a trail of torn clothing between the bed and the door.

Before he let the memory of what had followed distract him again, he brought his fingers to rest at last on the telepathic touch points of her temple and cheekbone.

"I have a memory to share," his voice was lower than usual.

She moved to rest more comfortably in the hollow of his shoulder and nodded once. He was Vulcan. She was his wife. If this was how he needed to tell her, she would not deny him.

"My thoughts to your thoughts," he intoned softly, "My mind to yours. Become one with me, k'diwa. Our minds are one..."

They had found the ship adrift, moving aimlessly along what had presumably been its last set course. The hull was scored and breached in dozens of places. One thin warp nacelle was missing entirely, the shattered stump bleeding some kind of coolant out into space. The other dangled uselessly from a twisted piece of metal that had once been its support. In multiple places the skin of the ship was sheared back like a banana peel. Its type and design were unknown. Spock and Chekhov had taken its last known trajectory and gone light years without finding a possible placed of origin. There were no life form readings, and after bringing the craft aboard and stowing it in the cargo bay, they had not been able to find anyone at all.

Security had crawled over it an inch at a time and finally declared it safe. Kirk found Spock, alone in the cargo bay, investigating it. Overcome no doubt by his near obsession with technology, the Vulcan was kneeling on the cold metal floor amidst the wreckage that had been salvaged. Before him stood a cylinder about two feet tall, slender as a reed but unbending. Spock was absolutely still, intense with concentration. Jim studied his First Officer for a moment.

In the last four years he had watched as Spock had struggled to reconcile the worlds of science and cold, hard logic with the world of the human heart. He had come to rely on Spock's keen intelligence and utter calm in the face of adversity. Spock had chosen for some unknown reason to lay all his incredible resources and skill at his captain's disposal.

In short, they had forged a friendship that crossed all the lines of conflicting cultures and logic.

He went to squat down next to Spock and said,

"So what is it?"

"It is a cylinder, approximately one point five meters tall with a six inch diameter, of unknown origin and purpose," Spock replied, without taking his eyes off the object.

A smile twitched the corners of Jim's mouth. Four years ago he would have thought Spock was being obtuse or deliberately vague, even attempting to annoy him. Now he knew the Vulcan was simply giving him all the information he currently possessed as clearly and succinctly as he could.

"So what's so …fascinating about it?" Jim asked, emphasizing his friend's favorite word for the strange and unusual.

Spock sat down; resting his arm and the PADD he was holding on one raised knee.

"It is completely undamaged."

Jim didn't have quite the fatal curiosity that plagued Spock, but a puzzle of this magnitude was sure to get his attention. He looked again at the twisted pile of wreckage cluttering the cargo bay. It seemed impossible that anything had come from it unscathed. Then he turned once more to the cylinder, pristine and gleaming.

"Was it shielded somehow?" he asked.

"It seems obvious that it was protected from whatever destroyed the ship and crew. What is not obvious is how or why," Spock replied. He turned the cylinder to show Jim a flat panel of squares containing foreign markings. "Uhura has linguistics working on this, but so far it is incomprehensible."

"No other writings or anything in the ship?" Jim asked.

"There is very little left in the ship that has any kind of recognizable form."

Jim stroked his jaw for a moment, thoughtfully. "So who were they, and perhaps more importantly, who attacked them…. And why?"

Spock may be more obsessed with the mysterious and undamaged cylinder, but Jim was far more concerned with the possibility that something in this region of space might attack the Enterprise.

Spock started to reply when suddenly the Enterprise lurched sideways. It seemed that the ship was shifting around them, though they were frozen in place. The lights flickered crazily and the ship hummed off and on. Then the light went out entirely into a foggy grayness that formed around Spock, Jim and the cylinder.

When the bubble vanished, Kirk and Spock were lying almost flat on the deck. The cargo bay was bathed only in a dim blue glow; it was the emergency lighting.

But it should have been brighter. Instead it appeared to have been on for some time. They both began to rise but Spock froze suddenly and gasped, falling forward to brace himself against the deck.

"Spock?" Jim reached for him, wrapping his hand firmly around his arm, "What?"

"Daphne," Spock whispered his wife's name, "She's ….gone."

Even in the dim light, he could see Jim's eyes fly open. "What do you mean? Gone?" he demanded. He always sounded as if he could change whatever pronouncement had just been made by the sheer force of his will.

Spock was still braced on the deck, staring at it unseeing.

"The link between us," his voice was ragged, "it's been severed."

"What would do that?" Jim's voice was clipped.

"Distance …a great distance," Spock paused and looked up at Jim from narrowed, haunted eyes, " or death."

He managed to move enough to sit on the deck again. There was more, but he couldn't quite find a way to tell this human. His sharp Vulcan hearing was sending him a message as urgent as his telepathic sense - silence. The ship was utterly devoid of voices, and the constant pressure of 428 alien minds he shielded himself from daily had also vanished.

Jim got up and strode resolutely to the comm unit on the wall. He punched it perhaps harder than was necessary.

"Bridge!" he barked. He waited…. And waited….. Finally he hit it again, "Engineering! Scotty!"

"Jim!" Spock had managed to rise. The tricorder was now being held limply at his side, having delivered a message he now had to give his Captain. A dark and dangerous shadow lay across his Vulcan features. "They won't answer."

"Why not?" Jim spoke the words without really wanting to know.

Spock held up the tricorder. "Because according to this, there is no one alive on this ship except you and me."


	2. Chapter 2

Furious denial flared in Jim's eyes, bright and hot enough to be seen even in the dim blue light. Spock strode across the distance between them and stopped practically on top of him. For a moment their gaze locked and held. Jim knew Spock would not lie to him, would never lie to anyone much less him, about such a thing.

Jim turned and faced the door, swallowed once and then marched towards it with determination in every step. It opened so slowly that he finally put a hand on one panel and shoved.

They stepped out into madness.

The corridor outside the cargo bay was strewn with red uniformed bodies. The pristine white walls were washed in dark red, dried blood and ugly black streaks; scorch marks left by phaser fire. Jim walked through the horrific scene like a man in a dream, slowly, step by cautious step. The security division had been killed with some kind of projectile weaponry. Their bodies were riddled with holes and covered in dried blood. As he passed each one he gave it a name.

"Evans…Ching….Tankris, she just transferred to security….Cordova," he stopped walking and hunkered down beside one body and whispered, "Thomson."

He stared at what remained of his chief of security. She had died in a pool of blood at the end of the hall, in front of the doors to the turbo lift. She must have been scrambling backwards, firing the whole time. Her phaser rifle was drained of power. She had died heroically, defending the Enterprise against …. Against _what?_

What had happened in the brief time he and Spock had been trapped inside that foggy bubble with the cylinder?

Spock was bent over the body of Lt. Capra, studying the readings of his tricorder as if the machine were surely malfunctioning.

"Captain," he spoke softly, "They have been dead for twenty seven hours."

Jim had tried to close Tomson's eyes; it bothered him that no one had done so already. But they were dried open and would never close again. He looked up at Spock, breathing slowly.

"How is that possible?"

Spock stood and came once again to stand close beside him, offering the comfort of his presence if not his words.

'Unknown, though perhaps…" he paused, "Captain… Jim!" His sharper tone caused Kirk to make eye contact with him again, dragging his gaze to look at Spock, to focus on him and not the hellish vision of the corridor. "Do you remember the effect we were subjected to? The bubble we appeared to be trapped in?"

Jim nodded and Spock went on, "It would seem we have been trapped inside some kind of time warp, frozen if you will, while outside the bubble time continued to pass at a normal rate."

Jim struggled to comprehend. He gestured listlessly at the death and destruction. "So all this happened while we were trapped in some kind of non-time?"

"It is not logical and I have no way of proving it, but at the moment it is the only possible explanation for our current situation."

"Then what time is it? They've been dead for twenty seven hours, that doesn't mean we were gone for that long. We could have been trapped for weeks in that thing, " Kirk wondered, "_When _are we exactly?"

"Unknown. My tricorder is still registering the time it was when we were trapped. But if we have been trapped for weeks the Enterprise, with no crew to sustain her, would be drained of all power and it is not. You have an antique timepiece in your quarters?" Spock reminded him, "It should register the current star date."

Jim nodded again. He stood, assuming the air of command even if he was left with only his First Officer. "All right. Then we go to my quarters first, figure out when we are. Then to the Bridge to see if we can get into the logs for the last twenty seven hours."

"Agreed," Spock answered. "But first, Captain. Look at the phaser burns on the walls. Starfleet security is too well trained to score the walls like this. There seems to be no marks that would have been in their actual line of fire. There is no technology of which I am aware that would reflect phaser fire. Even our shields simply absorb it."

"Then whoever did this has some way to reflect phaser fire?" Jim looked horrified all over again.

"We have seen the phenomenon before. The creature we call the gragonoth has the ability to do so; and we have never found that creatures' home planet or determined any place of origin at all."

Jim shivered. The gragonoth was one of those things in space everyone hoped never to meet; a mindless thing of grasping tentacles and sharp teeth, impervious to phasers, lethal and almost always deadly. At least one Federation ship floated endlessly in space even now, its crew dead and no one willing to risk the wrath of the gragonoth that now feasted on them. Jim knew of it firsthand. It had been the Enterprise that had been sent to find the vessel. He had nearly lost the mission team he had sent to investigate, including Chekhov and Spock.

But gragonoth did not carry projectile weapons, or leave intact bodies behind.

"The gragonoth can also move through internal shielding," Jim remembered, "Are you telling me that whoever got on board this ship could do the same thing?"

Spock paused for so long Jim wanted to shake him. He took a deep breath. His First Officer's ability to calmly assess a situation, no matter how long that might take, was one of his strongest assets.

"The possibility exists," Spock said finally.

Anger roiled up in Kirk for the first time since this entire bizarre thing had begun to unfold. Over the initial shock, he was suddenly simply furious. Spock watched the heated flush of fury rise up in his face and the struggle for control flash in his eyes.

"Jim," Spock's voice was a life line, pulling him back.

He glanced at Spock and nodded once.

"Let's go find out what happened to my ship," he said, with grim determination.


	3. Chapter 3

Montgomery Scott was restless. As a rule he was not a man given to sitting, unless there were technical journals to read. Sitting in the center seat on the Bridge did not give one much time to read. Sitting in the center seat while the Enterprise did little but cruise effortlessly through space - and while there was an alien technology waiting to be explored - was pure torture. He shifted and tried not to look bored and annoyed. He glanced at the clock and saw that it would only be another hour or so before he could declare his Bridge duties fulfilled and return to his first love, Engineering.

He had just begun wondering how badly it would affect the crew if a senior officer slipped off duty early when Daphne suddenly cried out as if she had been stabbed through the heart. In the time it took Scott to spin around in the chair, Uhura had already crossed the short distance to the science station. Daphne was bent over, one arm held tightly over her waist, her head resting in her other hand. Scott leapt up and joined Uhura.

"Daphne?" Uhura asked, "What's wrong? Someone call sickbay!" She called the last sentence over her shoulder and several crewmen scrambled to obey.

Daphne looked up into her friend's chocolate brown eyes, her own filled with sudden terror.

"Spock," her voice was ice," Our mind link…. It's gone."

"Gone how?" Scott demanded.

Uhura spun around and rushed back to her communication station. Before she regained her seat she was calling Mr. Spock to the Bridge.

Daphne looked helplessly up at Scott. "I don't know how," she sounded lost; her hands were now clenched between her knees and the pale skin of her face was stretched white over the bones beneath. "It's just gone as if it never existed, turned off like a light."

"Had it ever happened before?" Scott's tone softened in the face of her obvious distress.

"No," she whispered, staring now at Uhura and registering the horrifying fact that

Spock had not answered.

"Could Spock do that?"

"Turn it off? I don't know. Possibly," she looked up at the Engineer then, "He'd have to have a very good reason for doing it without warning. He'd know what the effect on me would be." She paused, swallowed. "The effect on him would be worse. The mind link with a bond mate is vital to Vulcans. Once established, it is almost as necessary as air."

Uhura had switched to summoning Captain Kirk, who was also, heart wrenchingly, not answering.

Scott faced the Bridge. "Where were the Captain and Mr. Spock? Were they together?"

"They were in the cargo bay with the wreckage we salvaged," Sulu answered, tensely.

At that moment McCoy burst onto the Bridge. Seeing Daphne still hunched over with Scott hovering at her side, he figured out the problem pretty quickly.

"What happened?" The Doctor was already waving a medical scanner over her . It told him that she was going into mild shock.

"She's lost the link she has with Spock," Scott said, grimly.

"Well get him up here!" McCoy snapped, as he applied a hypo to her arm.

"We're trying." The short, stark syllables, rolled in a heavy burr, were bitten off abruptly.

McCoy rested a shaking hand on Daphne's shoulder for support as the hypo took effect, but his soulful eyes met Scott's eyes and held them. Behind them, Uhura's attempts to raise either the Captain or First Officer continued to return only silence.

Scott walked resolutely back to the center seat and hit the communications button.

"Security!"

"Thomson here, sir."

"Get down to cargo bay two and check it out. We've lost communication with the Captain," the Engineer's Aberdeen accent had gone thick with the stress. Suddenly boredom seemed like a very pleasant state to be in.

"Aye, sir."

For long tense moments there was no sound on the Bridge but for the rhythmic beeping and whirring of the ship's automatic systems. No one dared to even breathe. Hot tears swam in Daphne's eyes but Star Fleet training and empathic discipline kept them from falling. Uhura had given up calling the Captain and Spock.

Then a sound and fury erupted from the comm system as if the Gates of Hell had opened in the depths of the ship. The automatic intruder alert blasted to life; phaser fire, screams, incoherent shouting and a noise like repeated thunder; and over all that Thomson's voice ordering her team to fall back.

Daphne leapt to her feet and bent over the science console.

"Intruders on board ….. unknown life form….humanoid…..weapons not registering." If she was conscious that this was most likely the beings who had killed her husband and brother there was no sign of it in her voice.

"Red alert!" Scott ordered and the claxton wailed to life, "Seal the Bridge."

"Now wait just a damned minute!" McCoy burst out, "You can seal whatever you want _after _I'm in sickbay."

Scott once again locked eyes with the Doctor but then nodded, "Get there as fast as you can. Garrovick!"

"Sir!" The red-shirted young man by the lift doors straightened to attention.

"Get the doctor to sickbay and then report to your security chief."

The intense young man, son of a starship captain, nodded.

As McCoy and Garrovick rushed into the turbolift a new voice came over the comm system, almost inaudible among the explosions and shouting.

"Bridge! Tankris here. We're pinned down defending the turbolift outside of Cargo 2. No information on location of Captain and First Officer… never made it inside the bay. Intruders….whole platoon…..fifty, maybe more…..some kind of armor, reflecting phaser fire. Phasers useless. "In the background they could hear Thomson screaming to hit them with everything they had. Tankris' breathless voice went on, "Internal shields also useless. They have…projectile weapons.. deadly. We're going to need something that kicks like a Mississippi mule to stop them….." Her transmission was cut off in a hail of thunder and ended in a scream.

Silence reigned on the Bridge once again and Scott was painfully aware that everyone, even the ones who weren't looking at him, was waiting for him to speak. Uhura recovered first, ordering additional security teams and beginning the general distress signal that would be sent even if it would take much too long to reach Fleet headquarters.

"Guns," Sulu said suddenly, drawing the attention. He swiveled his chair to face Scott. "My first love might be plants and rapiers, but I also collect antique guns. That's what they're using. It stands to reason if that is the level of their technology, then simply projectiles are what we need to stop them."

Scott was frowning, his engineer's brain scrambling for a way to manufacture antique firearms in the next five minutes. Daphne rescued him.

"We don't need the actual weapons. There are any number of explosives we can make in the lab, and the means to deliver them," she said. The terror had left her eyes, burned out by an angry fire.

"Can you deliver the instructions from here?" Scott asked.

"I'd rather work from the Science labs," she answered. "The ones on Deck 9 have everything we'd need to make explosives."

"I'd rather keep the corridors clear, lass," Scott softened the order, but it was an order nonetheless.

"The ductwork," Uhura said, and now everyone was looking at her. She shook her head as if it should be obvious, "There's a reason the Captain made us all memorize the internal structures of this vessel. The ductwork from this Bridge leads in any number of directions once it starts branching off. Daphne should be able to get to Deck 9 and drop down through the vents on the ceiling at any point she wants."

Daphne was both elated and dismayed. While she was very anxious to get to the lab, the idea of crawling through endless miles of narrow ductwork froze her claustrophobic soul. Angrily she shook it off. _Stop it; _she thought fiercely, _People have been saying you are your father's daughter all your life. There's still one Kirk alive on this ship. Time to prove it._

She squared her shoulders and waited anxiously for Scotty to approve the plan, knowing he had little choice.

"All right," he said finally, "But not alone, no one travels alone."

A blue shirted crewman at Life Support stood immediately. Daphne nodded approval. Kelowitz - calm, steady, smart and well trained. "Sir! Permission to accompany the lieutenant? I transferred to Biology from Security."

Scott nodded. Two security guards were already opening the vent in the floor. Another was pulling headlamps from the emergency supplies, which Daphne and Kelowitz donned before disappearing in the cold metal veins of the ship.

Scott watched them vanish and then turned to Uhura. "Are the intruders sending any sort of signal?" If a whole ship full of these beings was on its way, Scott wanted to be prepared, though he hadn't figured out yet exactly how they had gotten aboard to begin with.

Uhura's hands danced over her board, her concentration intense. "None on any channel that I can find."

Scott looked once again at the helm, and found Sulu and Chekhov bent over each other and whispering urgently. Scott's stomach churned like an ocean wave. Whatever the two of them were cooking up, it was bound to be more trouble.


	4. Chapter 4

Kirk stared at the twisted, scorched ruin that had been the corridor outside his quarters. He had once made an impassioned speech to the ruling council of Eminiar about the horrors of war; but even he had never really seen it. Phasers and kill settings that neatly eliminated an enemy had made it tidier somehow. Firing on an opponent across the distances of space had taken away the need to acknowledge the internal damage one could cause.

This was war at its worse, destruction for the sole purpose of annihilation; and Jim was shocked, sickened. Spock paused to run his long sensitive fingers over the bulkhead, studying the deep indentations.

"These were left by concussion weapons," he said, almost to himself, "We have nothing on board that would do this, without tampering."

"What would do it _with_ tampering?" Jim asked.

"Photon grenades for one," Spock replied.

They picked their way over tortured metal and broken glass. One doorway in particular had born the brunt of a blast that had blown it outward. Lying amidst the rubble they could see an unfamiliar pair of boots. They were mottled shades of red and black and gray, charred in places. Jim felt a surge of anger as he looked at what could only be the body of one who had attacked them. He stopped being cautious and bolted forward with grim determination, heedlessly knocking debris out of his way; and when one heavy fallen beam barred him from getting to the door he stepped out of the way and let Spock toss it aside as if it were kindling.

The room was narrow and had once been a storage area. The explosion had pulled the shelving down on top of at least 3 attackers, all wearing the same oddly camouflaged armor, burying them under an avalanche of the metal and ordinary supplies that had once been part of an efficiently run starship. Spock knelt carefully beside the body of one and examined it thoroughly. His face was grim as he read the tricorder.

"They are wearing gragonoth hide," he said. His voice was a Vulcan sandstorm.

Their invaders armor was a one piece body suit, thick and heavy, that rose up into a head covering. Their faces were completely shielded except for eyes slits and a round opening on the neck. Their eyes, at least of the one Spock was examining, were dark and narrow and blank in death. There was no protrusion on the center of a face for a nose. Instead the open space on the neck appeared to be for a hole used to breathe. Even without his tricorder, Spock knew they were unknown in the Federation.

Jim was slumped in the doorway, leaning his shoulder heavily on what remained of the jamb. "That explains how they deflect phasers," he murmured. "But not how they ever get close enough to a gragonoth to use their hide as armor."

"It also explains why our crew seems to have abandoned phasers in favor of explosives," Spock added, he was picking up shiny bits of shrapnel as he spoke, gathering them in his palm.

Jim started to reply, but something lying on the floor towards the back of the room caught his eyes. It was an arm in a red uniform, the hand charred and blackened. He followed the ruined fabric up to the shoulder and higher and found a familiar shock of silver blond hair, the intricate weave disheveled and broken.

"My God," he breathed. Cold horror chilled his voice and Spock rose instantly. Jim had plunged forward into the dim lighting and dangerous debris and Spock went after him.

Kirk flung wreckage off the body until he had at least partially uncovered his beautiful, and far too young, yeoman. The left side of her body was critically wounded. The right side was almost gone. Her right arm and shoulder were missing. The right side of her face was burned down to the bone.

"Janice," Jim choked on the word and almost fell forward. He was aware of Spock's hand on his shoulder being all that kept him upright. "What is she doing in here, with them?"

"Defending her ship," Spock answered, then sharply, "Jim! ….Jim," until the captain finally looked away from his yeoman and into the rock steady gaze of his First Officer. Spock held out his hand to show the pieces of shrapnel, "This used to be a phaser. She must have put at least one on overload, possibly two, and lured them in here after her. A blast of that magnitude in this confined area was certain death."

Jim was pale, even his lips were bloodless. He stared blankly at Spock for a moment.

"She overloaded a phaser," Jim repeated, processing the information and trying to deal with the juxtaposition of his lovely young yeoman - the one who brought him coffee and organized his files and made him lunch in the midst of crisis - understanding the intricate workings of phaser technology. He was looking at Spock as if pleading for answers to this sudden bizarre new world in which they lived. "I know she made me coffee once using a phaser. I always wondered how she got a phaser, since they all have to be checked out through security, and why Tomson didn't skin her alive for having one."

Spock was studying Jim carefully, looking for signs of shock. Years of standing at this man's shoulder had given him a strong sensory awareness of Kirk's moods. Spock's sensitive hearing could pick out the nuances in Kirk's voice. He had always known Kirk was attracted physically to Janice Rand. But this was much different than the way he had reacted to Thomson and her security team. This had struck at the captain's heart.

"She was a very competent member of the crew," he said evenly.

"Do you remember Bailey?" Jim looked down at Janice again, "I promoted him to the helm, with Alpha shift. When he was having a nervous breakdown over Blalok, Janice was making me lunch."

"She would not have been assigned to the Enterprise, and to you, if she was incapable of performing her duties."

Jim considered that. He had always known that Spock had practically hand picked the crew. As his XO that was Spock's job. It had been up to Jim to form them into a cohesive unit, but Spock had given him the very best to work with.

"Thank you," he said, softly. Spock lifted one eyebrow in question and Jim answered, "For her."

Spock found a black emergency blanket in the wreckage and together they covered Rand as well as they could. Kirk was grim and silent as they finished the treacherous route to his cabin. The destruction wasn't so bad in there. The heavy duty doors had protected the room from the worst of it. The utter normalcy of it, the unnerving quiet, froze Jim just inside the door. Spock, without asking permission, slipped into the desk chair and immediately began accessing the computer.

"It's almost completely offline," he said. His brows met in a deep V as he concentrated. "Your logs have been jettisoned."

He shared a knowing look with the captain.

"That explains what Janice was doing on this deck," Jim said, unnecessarily.

Shaking off the melancholy that was clawing at his soul, Jim went to the antique time piece sitting undisturbed on a shelf. He checked it and took a moment to absorb the information. "A little over a day," he said, "According to this we lost a little more than a day being suspended in time." He paused and took a deep breath, "Can you get into the Bridge records?"

"No," Spock had once again given his full attention to his alter ego, the ship's computer. "The system is locked, concentrating on something else, if you will. With considerable time, and the right equipment I may be able to access it again, unless I can discover what it is doing and turn it off." He swung away from the computer terminal to pull Jim in with that steady, calm stare. "Or I might be able to get into it from auxiliary control. If nothing else the back up logs should still be there."

Jim's eyes flashed, "I want to know who did this, Spock. Who were they? How did they get on board?"

Spock hesitated. The questions were not rhetorical. Kirk wanted answers; and at the moment Spock had none. But his long association with humans prepared him well. Kirk needed action in the face of hopelessness in order to keep going.

"I am hesitant to say, but I am working on a hypothesis."

Jim speared him with a look that should have dragged the information from Spock by sheer force of will alone.

"I need more information," Spock said, softly.

Muscles along Jim's jaw and throat rippled and tightened but he nodded. "All right. Where do we get this information?"

"Possibly in auxiliary control, if I can get the Bridge logs to function."

"Then let's go," Jim said, turning to the door as it swished obediently open.

Spock's speed and strength never failed to surprise Jim, not even after all this time. One moment the Vulcan was seated at the desk, and the next moment he was blocking the door. His hand, always shockingly lethal even when Spock was being careful, wrapped around Jim's forearm.

"Stay here," if there could be urgency and pleading in a Vulcan voice then there was in Spock's. "Let me go alone."

Kirk understood. Janice Rand was just the beginning of what awaited them. The rest of their family and friends were still out there somewhere. Spock was far better suited to maintaining the emotional distance that would be needed to survive it. They had both seen starship captains go mad over much less than this.

"I can't, Spock." Sadness and regret were evident in his eyes and voice. "I can't. This is my ship, my crew. If I swore to you right now that I would stay here, would you believe me?"

Spock shook his head. "No," he admitted.

Jim didn't say anything else. But he allowed the frank terror and uncertainty to rest in his gaze for a moment. Spock had melded with his thoughts and emotions and probably knew him better than any man alive. Without words he told his First Officer, _I can do this, but only if you're with me._

And without words, Spock understood.


	5. Chapter 5

Scott ordered the red alert siren turned off, though the lights continued to flash urgently. He turned, hands on his hips, to Chekhov and Sulu.

"All right you two conspirators, what are you conspiring about now?" he demanded.

Sulu waited, listening to the last few words that Chekhov was whispering. He swallowed hard but looked Scott straight in the eye.

"We have several cases of photon grenades on board, in the weapons locker," he said.

"Aye," Scotty nodded, his brogue thick. "But if phasers aren't affective against these villains, the photon grenades won't be either."

"Not as regular photon grenades, no sir," Chekhov agreed," But we know how to rig them to explode, and they are portable."

Scott winced. His strong Gaelic features betrayed the pain he felt at the thought of such explosions in the corridors of his beloved ship.

"Sir!" Uhura said, "We've lost contact with a second security detail. All lower decks reporting intruders….." She paused and then finished in a soft trembling voice, "No injuries. All those left behind were killed instantly."

Scott held Uhura's dark, steady gaze for a moment and then nodded again, almost to himself. Whether they wanted it or not, the Enterprise was at war. He looked back at Sulu and Chekhov and wondered if he was about to give them permission to walk off to their deaths.

But the two of them were acting as if they were sitting on live wires, strung tight with the need to act. Chekhov's face was vivid with tension. Men like that didn't sit calmly on the Bridge at a time like this.

"All right lads," he said, softly, "I can see there won't be much to stop you from going, so you might as well do it with my blessing. Truth be told I'd rather be going w' ye. Take phasers"

"With all respect, sir," Sulu said, already on his feet and hurrying behind Chekhov for the still-open hatch on the floor, "If phasers worked we wouldn't be going to jerry-rig the photo grenades."

The truth of that sat bitterly on Scott, even as he watched Ensign Riley and Lt. Arex slip into the vacated seats at the helm with trained Star Fleet discipline. "Aye, but ye can put them on overload if worse comes to worse."

The Ensign and the Lieutenant paused and shared a look, then reluctantly took the belts and phasers Lt. Osbourne, the sole remaining Bridge guard, handed them. After securing the belts around their waists, they disappeared down the hole like Alice after the Rabbit, leaving everyone wondering if they would ever be seen again.

"More reports coming in, sir," Uhura said, dismally, "The intruders are splintering into smaller groups and coming into the mid decks now."

"On audio, Lt," he said, flatly.

For several long somber moments Scott listened to the sounds of the Enterprise being gutted of her crew. Phaser fire followed deafening explosions. Silence followed screams. He finally signaled to shut off the audio. There was little they could do but continue to hold the Bridge. The war was internal, not out in the cold heartless expanse of space. He knew this crew. They'd not go down without one hell of a fight.

If they could not stop and defeat these relentless murderers, Scott knew he had no choice but to destroy the Enterprise. He could not- he _would not _- allow them to use her as a vessel to attack the Federation. The knowledge weighed like death on his soul.

His grim thoughts were interrupted by a familiar voice coming from the hole in the floor,

"Do not fire! It is me!" This was followed by a rather savage, but also familiar, feline growl as M'Ress hauled herself up out of the duct and then reached down to rather unceremoniously drag Lt. Palmer out after her.

"Did ye not hear the orders that the Bridge was sealed, Lt?" He snapped, glaring at the bristling Caitan and the rather disheveled Human.

"Yes, sir, and we know the problem we are facing. Uhura has all of us monitor the Bridge channel at all times. We have information," M'Ress said, flattening her ears against her russet mane, "and we came to get Uhura.'

Uhura stood, with controlled grace and extreme dignity in the face of the current situation, and faced the two females who served under her in Communications.

"What information and why do you need me?" she demanded.

M'Ress stood nearly at attention, balanced on her toes.

"Sir!" M'Ress replied, addressing her Superior, "They are communicating with each other at decibels that are outside the range of normal Human hearing."

Uhura digested the information quickly, "But you heard them?"

"Yes," M'Ress continued to report, "I can, possibly Mr. Spock could as well," here she faltered for a moment, looking distressed. Then she shook it off visibly, her mane rippling and the claws on her toes digging into the carpet, and went on, "I was on Deck 13 when I heard them coming. It is a language of hoots and whistles and long single notes drawn out until they fade. I climbed up into the ducts as they went by. The Universal translator isn't set to detect sounds at their level. So I went to Auxiliary Control and reset it. But it still can't make out what they are saying. There are not two words it can string together coherently. That is why I came to get you." M'Ress ended with a growl instead of her customary breathy purr.

Palmer spoke up, "I can run the Bridge Communications. Anyone can monitor the channels and send distress signals. But M'Ress knows that Translator inside and out. She could probably make it sing and dance if she wanted; and you," she looked pointedly at Uhura, "are the best linguist we've got. If the Translator can give you the words, you should be able to figure out what it is they want, and maybe stop this mess."

Uhura looked anxiously at Scott, "Permission to leave the Bridge," she said. "We can work best from Auxiliary Control. There's no background noise there."

"At this rate, I'll be up here all alone!" Scott grumbled.

"Scotty, we've got to figure out what it is they want. They may not realize we can't hear them. They may be unable to hear or understand us."

Her dark chocolate eyes pinned him straight through the heart. They both knew there wasn't a choice.

"Aye," he said, with resignation and reluctance heavy in his brogue, "Palmer, take over Communications. Uhura, you should take weapons."

"They will not be useful," M'Ress replied, a snarl deep in her voice, "or needed." To emphasize her statement, M'Ress bared her sharp teeth and unsheathed the lethal claws on her hands and feet.

Scott would have given a lot at that moment to think of another way this could be done. But M'Ress was right. Uhura was the best chance they had at deciphering a language and M'Ress had to be within hearing distance of the aliens to pick them up on the Translator. He watched, feeling frustrated and helpless as the two women vanished as surely as one did into a black hole.

Sulu and Chekhov moved as silently as possible through the maze of ducts that moved artificial atmosphere through their ship; relying on each other to remember the way down to the weapons lockers, crouching like prey hiding from a predator when their invaders would run down the corridors below them, holding each other's gaze and seeing the anger and horror reflected back at the carnage they could see when they crawled over each vent. They were grim and tight-lipped, moving past the bodies of their crewmates and the blood stained halls.

At one point Chekhov had to stop and close his eyes, purging his mind of the images of the dead and of the blood. Sulu paused with him, trying to stay close.

"Chekhov," he whispered urgently, "Pav…."

The Russian opened his eyes and rage had burned the youth and spirit out of them. Sulu could only nod.

"Keep moving," he said, knowing it would be too easy to get lost in grief and anger, "We have work to do."

He took the lead, squeezing past Chekhov and crawling forward determinedly. He navigated a tight intersection and came up short, stopping so abruptly Chekhov slammed into him. Sulu had nearly run head first into Janice Rand.

"Janice! You scared the hell out of me!" he snapped, "What are you doing crawling around in here?"

"Same as you," she snapped back, feisty as ever, blue eyes flashing in the dark, "Trying to get past those armored fiends long enough to do my duty."

Sulu tried not to moan with exasperation, "Janice, go to your quarters and stay there. Don't make me make it an order."

"Don't make me disobey you," she answered, "The Captain's logs have to be jettisoned. It's protocol. Regulations."

Now Sulu did groan. At the moment, they had nothing but their sense of honor and duty. He was marching… well crawling, off to do his with Chekhov on his heels. Short of dragging Janice to the Brig, which was impractical at best under the circumstances, he had no chance of making her go hide somewhere.

"Sulu, let her go," Chekhov hissed from behind him. "We are Star Fleet. This is what we do. Don't make her hide in the dark."

Sulu shook his head, resigned. Supporting his weight on one hand he released the phaser belt and passed it to her. She took it but confusion was plain on her face even in the dim light.

"I thought phasers weren't doing any good against them?"

"It will if you overload it. You remember how?" His dark eyes bored into hers as if to drag the memory out of her.

"I remember," she replied, awkwardly securing the belt around her waist.

"Janice," his voice was ice coated, "For God's sake be careful….." he paused, swallowed, "If anything happens to me I need someone to take care of Gertrude."

"Beauregard," she said, stubbornly.

"She's _pink!_" Sulu said.

"Cultural bias," she said, dismissively, "I know a man when I see one."

"Can you two continue your argument about that plant later? Please?" Chekhov asked, as if they had made him pause over a nest of live hornets.

With great reluctance, Sulu plastered himself against the wall so Janice could squeeze past them. He watched her go until she melted into the dark like snow.

"Sulu!" Chekhov urged, as the sounds of new artillery fire and shouting began coming towards them from below.

"Come on," Sulu said, and surged forward once again.


	6. Chapter 6

Kirk and Spock walked the halls and rooms of the Enterprise in reverence and horror. The ship was a floating tomb, hallowed ground sanctified by the life's blood and tragic deaths of her crew. Kirk's heart was lead. Every body, every blank staring eye he confronted seemed to condemn him. _Where were you? Why weren't you here? Why didn't you save us? _At times he seemed to hear their voices calling out to him and wondered if he was going mad.

Perhaps it had been a mistake to get to know 429 people so intimately. The only one he had left was Spock. The worst kind of hell he could imagine lay at his feet - walking his ship among the dead, broken, mutilated, bloody remains of his crew. War in all it's glory had come to the Enterprise and left behind the severed limbs and shattered skulls, the blood and guts of battle.

One day grief would come. At the moment all he could feel was a white-hot rage that burned with intensity and the power of angels. Some force had taken his crew from him and raped his ship; and Fate had intervened to prevent him from even meeting death with them much less fighting it. The Captain of a starship was not supposed to be the last man standing. He was supposed to lead the charge. Kirk felt furious, and cheated.

They turned down the hallway that led to Auxiliary Control. The majority of halls they had traveled had been bloody, filled with corpses of crew and enemy alike. Exploded walls and blackened carpet had been their companions. This one was no different. The walls were destroyed, every door, including the one to Auxiliary Control was ripped open. A body, wearing the now familiar mottled gragonoth armor, was collapsed face down on the floor.

Spock and Kirk exchanged a solitary long look and advanced slowly. As they got closer it became clear this one was as dead as all the rest; but unlike his comrades, he was not torn by explosions. He was all but untouched, except for the weighed piece of leather wrapped around his neck. They crouched cautiously and Spock reached out to touch the weapon with one disbelieving finger.

"Isn't that?" Kirk prompted.

"The ahn-woon from the wall in our quarters?" Spock finished. "Yes; and there is only one other person on board who would know the security code to get it off the wall, and who has the skill to use it."

They locked eyes. Kirk's were blazing fire. Spock's were glittering black ice.

"Daphne," Jim whispered his sister's name as if it was too precious to say out loud. Suddenly unable to speak, Spock only nodded.

They rose in unison and finished walking to the door of Auxiliary Control. The door sluggishly slid open onto another nightmare. Lying in a puddle composed of dark red blood and the oily blue-black blood they had come to recognize as that spilled by their attackers, was M'Ress. Her lovely russet mane was soaked with it. She had been shot at point blank range by the enemy she had wrapped in her lethal embrace. The claws of her feet had disemboweled him, leaving a long trail of unfamiliar internal organs spilling out between them. She had died, but she had taken her enemy with her.

Most of Auxiliary Control had simply been shot to Hell, the panels turned to slag. There was a body in a red uniform draped over the Communications station, shielding it. Jim's soul endured an icy hail of horror as he realized it was Uhura.

He was temporarily robbed of the ability to move. He could only watch through eyes blurred by sudden tears as Spock reverently and with great tenderness untangled M'Ress from her killer and laid her against a wall. He then lifted Uhura the way one would lift a sleeping child and laid her on the floor. Jim shook himself forcibly from his stupor and pulled emergency blankets out of the damaged cabinet on the wall. Stepping around the blood and destruction he covered both women with grave dignity.

Kneeling beside Uhura, he met Spock's unusually grave expression and waited. The Vulcan had sunk deep into thought and ancient disciplines designed to suppress everything but cold, hard logic. Spock always frightened him a little when he was like this.

Jim looked away finally, unable to keep looking into the fathomless depths of his First Officer's eyes. He looked down at the dark blanket that now covered the remains of his Communications Officer.

The woman who had tackled her career and her enemies with wit, patience and prowess was somehow gone from the Universe. He had known, in the back of his mind, that he had often been a royal pain in the nether regions to Uhura. But she had always shrugged off his rants and bad temper, fixed the problem, coordinated damage control, shore leave parties and made sure he was up to date on everything happening at Star Fleet even when they were days away from being able to receive updates.

Lovely, generous, tenderhearted enough to forgive thousands of tribbles even as they overran his ship, strong enough that it had taken two armed Triskellion warriors to subdue her, confident enough to tell him she was frightened by the Platonians.

And now she was gone.

He had taken her far too much for granted. The pain was like a fist around his heart. Coupled with losing the technically brilliant, graceful feline M'Ress, it was almost unbearable.

"All her wounds are in the front," Spock said, suddenly, almost to himself, "Yet she was face down over the console. Her last action was to protect the Communications console."

Spock rose. The front of his uniform was stained with blood now. Jim followed a heartbeat later and dared once more to look at him. The Vulcan was still cold and distant. He reminded himself that when Spock was like this, it meant that he was balanced on the knife edge between killing emotion and logic. He had been on the receiving end of Vulcan rage. He didn't relish seeing it again.

"You have been asking what they wanted," Spock reminded him, "It seems the crew was asking the same thing."

"Let's see what they found out," Jim murmured.

His stomach churning, Kirk helped Spock use another emergency blanket to wipe Uhura's blood from the console. He stood, trying not to rock or pace, while Spock interfaced the the auxiliary communications station.

"The aliens spoke in sounds the humans couldn't hear," Spock relayed the information as the computer revealed it, "M'Ress must have discovered this. She's the only one on board whose hearing is the equal of mine. She was working with Uhura in recalibrating the Universal Translator so they could be understood and what we say would be heard in their range," he paused, listening to the recordings, "Their language still makes no sense. Certain words and phrases have no meaning for us. It also seems M'Ress was not catching every frequency on which they were communicating."

"But you can?" Jim said, anxiously.

"More of it than the Caitan, in the lower range," Spock replied, listening intently and making minute adjustments to the UT. His forehead furrowed with concentration, his brows forming a deep V. He glanced briefly at Jim, "She caught nearly 99% of it. I am uncertain the missing 1% really made a difference."

"What were they saying?" Jim was almost vibrating with impatience, even though he knew that ranting and raging would not make Spock move any faster, any more than it had ever ruffled Uhura's feathers.

"They are demanding to know why we attacked them," Spock said.

"Attacked them? Why would we attack them? How did they get on board?" Jim hated answers that left him with more questions.

Spock was still listening. He held up a hand to ask Jim for silence.

"We brought them on board," Spock said, finally, "They are referencing their destroyed vessel. It has to be the wreckage we brought into the cargo hold."

"There wasn't anything alive on that, certainly not the numbers of aliens we've been seeing,"Jim said.

"Nothing our sensors could detect. But there were many different forms of technology that we could not identify - the cylinder for example."

"You said that device held us in some kind of time suspension,"Jim was calmer now that he had a puzzle to unravel, "Could it, or one like it, have been holding them?"

Spock nodded, "Indeed. It would be an efficient way to transport a crew. They may have expected to arrive at their destination in the time they were being suspended, or they escaped into time to await rescue. Instead they arrived on the cargo deck of the Enterprise, where upon they assumed they had been attacked and taken hostage."

Now Jim did pace, restless, impatient fury compelling him.

"You mean the wholesale slaughter of my crew was caused by nothing but a miscommunication? An inability to hear them, or understand them, or be understood by them?"

Spock phrased his answer very carefully. "The deaths of the crew were caused by the alien presence on board the Enterprise."

"An alien presence we couldn't communicate with,"Jim snapped.

Spock lowered his eyes. "There is more," he said.

Jim stopped walking and speared him with a look. "What more?"

"They are asking for the return of 'the one who bends now'," Spock answered.

"Who?" Jim's mind seized on another puzzle.

"For that I have no answer. We have no word for it in our languages and that is the best the Translator can do with it," Spock continued, "They may have thought we had one of them held prisoner, perhaps their captain. Also, they consider themselves far superior to us. They reference us as inferior vermin, call us 'those unworthy to live'. It is as if we have met the Klingons, who also despise anyone but them as inferior, but with technology that is alien and in some respects superior to ours."

"We've met many aliens before that were far advanced from us without being slaughtered by them," Jim mused, quietly, "The Metrons, the Organians ... they managed to encounter us without destroying us, though it may have been a near thing with the Metrons. Even the Vulcans when they first came to Earth considered themselves superior to the Humans. Sometimes I think they still do."

He paused and gave his sometimes terrifying First Office a look of quiet affection. It was the softest expression that had crossed his features since this whole bizarre event had begun to unfold.

"We have met an equal number who hate us. The Klingons, the Orions, the Romulans. None of them are in the position of destroying us however. It is unknown whether the vessel carrying these aliens could have damaged the Enterprise. But clearly, in hand to hand combat, they are a formidable opponent. They forced the crew, by means of their superior armor, to resort to far more primitive measures to defeat them."

"They defeated them only at the cost of all their own lives. Some of them didn't even have a chance," Jim said, remembering whole rooms and corridors that had been filled with bodies that had simply been gunned down. The casual destruction of his crew had hit like a hammer blow.

"It appears that they were killed because they were unable to answer their demands," Spock sounded as if he had swallowed glass. His expression was still unreadable.

Jim paused to gather himself. "We still need to get to the Bridge," he said finally, "Can you unseal it from here?"

Spock only nodded and complied, "Provided the way is not blocked by wreckage, we should be able to access the Bridge now."

"Then let's go," Jim said, taking a long deep breath, "And I... I want to find Bones."

Spock stood. His uniform sleeves were streaked with dark red blood where they had rested on the console.

"Jim," he said, with a trace of warning in his voice.

Kirk cut him off, "I have to, Spock."

Spock had stood at his Captain's shoulder for too many years not to recognize that tone of voice. Kirk would find McCoy with or without him.

"During such a crisis, I am certain he would have been in Sickbay."

Spock's flat, dispassionate tone reminded Jim that under the right circumstances and for the right reasons, Vulcans could kill.


	7. Chapter 7

Kelowitz obediently followed Daphne through the maze of ducts, silent until she appeared to take a wrong turn.

"Lieutenant! The way to Deck 9 is straight ahead," he said.

"I know, but I need something from my quarters," she answered, glancing over her shoulder at him, "You can go ahead if you want. I will meet you there."

Kelowitz shook his blond head emphatically. "No, Commander Scott would have my hide. He said to stay with you. No one goes alone."

Daphne made no acknowledgment. She continued forward, resolutely ignoring the sounds of gunfire and screams echoing through the ship.

The corridor that led to her quarters was eerily quiet when they finally reached it. They undid the fastening on the vent closest to her door and dropped silently to the floor. Keeping their backs to the wall and every sense alert they crept to the door. She keyed the security code and they slipped inside.

The slightly elevated temperature and altered gravity washed over her. Kelowitz staggered as he hit the shelf where the gravity changed. She caught his arm and smiled a sad apology.

"Should have warned you," she said.

He shrugged and flashed a smile full of charm and youth. For a moment she was sharply reminded of the handsome and irrascible Ensign her brother had been when they first met. Her breath ached in her lungs for a moment at the memory.

"Should have known," he said.

Daphne went to the wall on which they displayed the impressive set of weaponry native to Vulcan and Thrace. She opened a panel on the wall and keyed the security code that would release the field around them. She took down a lethal looking short sword hanging from a decorative belt and handed it to Kelowitz. He eyed it as if it would change into a cobra and strike him.

"Take it," she said, "You don't have to be elegant with it. If you can chop up a steak dinner, you can use that. Be careful. It's kept sharpened."

With great reluctance he fastened it around his waist. Daphne took down another belt and secured it around her own waist. It was dripping with daggers, sharp as dinosaur teeth. The way she put it on was enough to tell Kelowitz she knew what she was doing with them. Next she took down the long strip of weighted leather and then put up the security field again.

Kelowitz nodded towards the lirpa she had left hanging there.

"What about that? It looks like it could be pretty deadly," he said.

"It is," she answered, "I doubt either of us could lift it. It's made for Vulcan gravity and Vulcan strength."

She studied the ancient weapon for moment and swallowed against the dry ache in her throat. Tears threatened her eyes. With little effort she could produce a vivid image in her mind of watching Spock go through the ritual practice with it - naked from the waist up, the ahn-woon tied around his hips, the muscles in his chest, arms and shoulders rippling as he whirled the weapon through intricate and precise movements.

_Spock. _She cried out to him mind, body and soul and found only silence. Her knees threatened to buckle under the weight her own grief. Her hand gripped the handle of one of her knives to keep from shaking, so tightly the bones showed white beneath her skin. Her heart was torn open by the loss. With great effort she tore her gaze from the wall and concentrated on the utilitarian grey carpet at her feet.

At the moment she had a ship to help defend. To honor the memory of her husband and her brother she would defend it to the best of her ability; and when she was done, if she lived, she would go home to Thrace and try to figure out how to live without Spock.

With any luck, she wouldn't live.

When she looked up again, Kelowitz had climbed up onto the desk and released the bolts holding the vent on the ceiling in place. He tossed the vent cover to the floor and looked at her pointedly. Daphne draped the ahn-woon over her shoulder and across her body, tying it loosely over her hip. With grim determination she climbed up onto the desk and let Kelowitz drag her up into the vent after him.

They dropped to the floor once again just outside of Auxiliary Control. It was risky, but it was shorter to take the ladder system to the floors below, and to the Science labs, than to navigate the twisted ducts between here and there. Keeping their backs once again to the wall, they rounded a curve and stopped short. In the center of the hall was an armored intruder bringing his weapon to bear on Uhura and M'Ress as they made their way to Auxiliary Control. Instinct made Daphne act. With no conscious thought, the ahn-woon was suddenly flying through the air and with lethal precision it wrapped itself around the attackers throat. He - It? - staggered clutching at his throat and then fell, lifeless, to the deck.

Her eyes met those of both Uhura and M'Ress. The Caitan's fur was standing on end, her claws unsheathed.

"He called for assistance," M'Ress hissed, and how she knew that Daphne couldn't guess.

"Go!" Daphne ordered, as they heard the sound of pounding footsteps coming their way.

"We need to work in Auxiliary Control," Uhura's face was ashen, but calm.

"Lock yourselves in," Daphne said, "Kelowitz, let's go. Up the ladder."

Her devoted companion had gone to the alien body and picked up its weapon. He slung it over his shoulder just as the door of Auxiliary Control hissed and sealed shut. They disappeared down the ladder set in the wall just as the running footsteps above them came to a halt, presumably beside their fallen comrade. Daphne moved with stealth downward to the Science floor and then to the Labs. She was frustrated by the loss of the ahn-woon, but unwilling to go back to try to retrieve it. There would have to be time later to get it and then she could return it to Spock's Clan.

About a dozen people were waiting in the lab. Her own personal assistance, Ensign Sarah Michaels, was ready with a report. They had communicators and there were fourteen science team members in Science Two and Three waiting for instructions. The rest were aiding Security in the defense of the ship, ready to take supplies where they would be needed.

Daphne found solace in discipline, and in the fierce eager expressions of the Science team Spock had forged. She set aside the memory of having just killed another sentient being. Like her grief for Jim and Spock, it had to wait.

"Lieutenant?" Michael's asked, timidly, "Commander Spock, sir? Is he?"

Daphne carefully schooled her features to stillness, imprisioning her own emotions with enough force to cage demons. They were all looking at her anxiously. She'd been shielding her empathic abilities since losing her bond with Spock on the Bridge, but their feelings were plain on their faces. _They love him too, _she realized.

"He is MIA," she said, gently, clinging to her husband's mantra that an untold truth was not a lie, "There has been no contact from him or the Captain."

"Does that mean?"

Daphne cut her off shortly, "At the moment all it means is that no one can contact them. You all know your Captain and your Commander. If they can act they will. In the meantime, we make them proud, " she gave them all a stern fierce look, "All right, everyone. We're making explosives. If it can be safely handled, transported and won't blow out an exterior bulkhead, make it. Notify the other labs. Get busy!"

They scrambled into action and she watched with satisfaction. Taking Spock's chair at his science station she began running an inventory of everything they had on hand that could be made to blow up.

"Commander?" Kelowitz had come to stand behind her. He looked uncomfortable.

She turned and looked up.

"With all respect," he began, "I'm a biologist, and not a very good one. I only transferred as part of the rotation for the command track. I came from Security..."

Daphne cut him off, understanding what he was asking. "Go on," she said softly. "You managed to capture one of their weapons. It could be valuable. Get it to Engineering if you can. Keep the sword. My family would be honored."

Kelowitz stood taller. She nodded to him and he turned on his heel and walked sharply out the door of the Science Lab.

Somehow, Daphne knew she would never see him again.


	8. Chapter 8

Chekhov and Sulu lurched as the ship was rocked by another explosion. Sulu braced his hand on the nearest shelf and Chekhov held onto the table as the aftershocks reverberated through the Enterprise. He gave Sulu a look full of intensity.

"Remind me not to make our Science Department angry," he muttered, "They seem to be quite good at quickly making deadly weapons."

"It's not the weapons that scare me," Sulu said, "It's all those viruses they've got stored."

Sulu hadn't looked up from the photon grenade in his hand but Chekhov understood. Perhaps this was better - meeting the enemy head on and armed, instead of lying in a biobed waiting for death to come.

The next explosion was closer. The sound was not as muffled. Gunfire erupted like multiple cracks of distant thunder.

"They're moving," Sulu said, grimly, "Getting closer to the Bridge. We have to go."

"I have seventeen done," Chekhov said, adding the last one to the bag at his feet.

Sulu grinned like a hungry wolf, "Nineteen," he said, "I beat you by two."

"I was trying for accuracy," Chekhov said, rising and slinging the strap on the bag over his shoulder, "I didn't want to blow us up on the way to getting us blown up." The Russian had kept his tone light and he tried to smile bravely but his eyes were haunted and restless. "Besides, I took time to recalibrate this to track these Cossacks."

He held up a tricorder before putting it over the other shoulder.

"Good," Sulu, then added, "Spock would be proud of you."

Pain flashed quickly across Chekhov's face. "Mr. Spock would tell you that pride is a human emotion and it's my duty to learn as much as he can teach me."

"Yeah," Sulu agreed, but something in his eyes said he wasn't convinced, "That's what he would say."

Using the table they hoisted themselves up into the ceiling once again. They crawled carefully through the white metal tunnels, heading in the direction of sounds they should have been fleeing from. As if in a nightmare, where time slowed down and everything seemed magnified, they tracked down pockets of invaders, dropped grenades on them and scrambled away as quickly as possible. Sulu had ordered a 20 second delay on the detonation. It wasn't a lot of time to get away in the tight confines of the ducts. Many times they made it to safety just as the ceiling behind them collapsed in slow motion smoke and flame. But there wasn't time to be terrified either, as much as they wanted to be. There wasn't time to be sick though their stomachs churned at the carnage, the smell of blood and death and burning ozone. There wasn't time to cry or mourn when they crawled over grillwork that revealed fallen shipmates mutilated, some beyond recognition, some too horribly recognizable.

They had arrived at one vent milliseconds too late to stop the instant deaths of Martha Landon and Kyomoto, a botanist who had been pestering Sulu for weeks about his collection of plants. Martha had uselessly fired a phaser at the invaders, facing them with defiance and too much bravery. An alien had put a bullet in her forehead with pinpoint accuracy and no mercy. It had taken three bullets to stop Kyomoto as she had ducked for cover. Wretched with regret at the further mutilation of their comrades, Chekhov had tossed a grenade out the grill to the floor.

He had wanted to watch, to see Martha's killers blown into nothing. Only Sulu's urgent order put him in motion. A spray of gunfire ripped the ceiling behind him just before it blew up.

They fled around a bend, followed a descending shaft for a short time and stopped for breath when they came to a corner. For a moment Chekhov collapsed onto his side, his head pillowed on his forearm, his eyes closed. Sulu waited, watching. Chekhov was his best friend, his cohort in mischief and mayhem. He knew that Chekhov had broken it off with Martha at least a year ago, but they had remained friends. Her death was like a hammer stroke to Chekhov. The vicious and unprovoked attack had taken the bright, vivacious spirit that was Chekhov and dragged him, down, down, into unyielding dark.

"Pav," Sulu said, softly. His own soul was in agony, but there was an ancient samurai screaming inside it to keep going.

Chekhov opened his eyes and Sulu saw a flame of sorrow and hate burning there. The Enterprise shuddered again beneath them.

"Deck Nine," Sulu guessed.

"The Science Labs," Chekhov exhaled. His muscles screamed in protest but he rolled to his knees and settled the bag of remaining grenades on his back. "Let's go."

They made their way downward, blocking the sounds of a world gone mad as those same sounds grew louder and louder. When they could hear heavy booted feet marching towards them, Sulu stopped over a grate and sent Chekhov ahead to the next one down the tunnel. The order was wordless after that. They unscrewed the grillwork and waited to flank the oncoming platoon.

"Sulu," Chekhov hissed.

"What?" Sulu whispered back, annoyed.

"It's been good to serve with you," Chekhov replied.

Sulu's throat constricted with hard emotion but there was no time to reply. The platoon of marauders rounded a corner and was there beneath them. The grenades dropped but this time - perhaps warned now by the other roving bands of aliens - their enemy reacted, firing deadly weapons into the ceiling.

Their world erupted into shards of pain and blinding light. Sulu was vaguely aware of Chekhov screaming in mortal agony just before the explosion shattered the ceiling and the conduit. He was falling, his body flaming with pain.

And then only silence and darkness reigned.


	9. Chapter 9

Any direct route Kirk and Spock might have taken to Deck Seven was blocked by the aftermath of multiple explosions. Ceilings and walls were collapsed in on each other, leaving piles of wreckage. They had found Lt. Kyle lying amid one pile of wreckage. He was almost burned beyond recognition. As they had each time it had been possible, they covered him and moved on. The first access ladder led only down again, to Deck Nine, but Kirk chose to take it and see if they could find another way up to Sickbay.

They had skirted the worst of Deck Nine on their journey to Auxiliary Control on Deck Eight. Now they were confronted with it again. Even in his darkest nightmare, Kirk had not envisioned anything like Deck Nine in its current state.

The bodies of his crew had been randomly tossed aside, many dead from a single bullet wound to the head. They found the discarded remains of two more Security Platoons. Kirk had nearly become used to the carnage. At least his stomach had stopped discharging gorge into his throat.

The rooms were torn apart as if a lunatic had carved them in some mad search. They had been looking for someone… or something.

_The one who bends now_, Kirk thought. Whoever it was, they had wanted it very badly. He glanced at Spock. Deck Nine was the Science Officer's domain, as many of the labs were located here. The Vulcan was assessing the damage with his typical, cool penetrating gaze. Kirk took comfort in that. Spock could tell them they had seconds to live and it would somehow be comforting, if delivered in that rational voice and accompanied by that solemn expression.

It was almost impossible to walk normally. In places they were forced to walk across twisted "floors" that had once been walls. When corridors were blocked they went into rooms and through walls that simply did not exist anymore. They had little luck finding another way to access Deck Eight. It seemed the defenders of the Enterprise had chosen to take a stand on Deck Nine.

They came finally to a corridor that looked like the aftermath of an earthquake. Every bulkhead had been blown out. Everything was scored with phaser burns and riddled with bullets. The ceiling had collapsed and covered the invaders with rubble. Even all this time later, the air stank with a strong, acrid metal smell that must have come for the invaders weapons.

Kirk was horrified to see two familiar figures in shredded gold uniform shirts, lying on top of the debris. He stared hollow-eyed, too numb suddenly to react. It was Spock who walked forward on quiet, stealthy feet; as if he walked on graves. His face was pale but his composure was absolute. He knelt beside one, paused, and then lowered his head for a moment as if seeking control.

"It is Chekhov," he said, finally, in a tone rimmed with ice.

Kirk forced himself forward against a murderous wave of grief. He found Sulu covered in blood. One arm was missing and most of one leg. The remains of a strap of some kind hung from his shattered shoulder.

Across the void of destruction, Kirk locked eyes with his First Officer.

"They should have been on the Bridge," Kirk said, dully.

Spock lifted an eyebrow. "In time like those faced by this crew in our absence, men like this do not remain safely on the Bridge," he spoke slowly and allowed his solemn tone to honor his deceased comrades.

Jim looked up at the inverted ceiling, the torn ductwork and the bullet riddled surface.

"They must have been crawling around in the ductwork, stalking the enemy," he shook his head, stunned by the bravery.

Spock lifted Chekhov and carried him away from the worst of the slaughter and laid him carefully against a wall, arranging the Ensign as if he were sleeping. He knelt there for a moment beside the young man who had been his unofficial protégé. During the incident with the Tholians, Chekhov had been held in Sickbay for only a short time and yet his absence had been deeply felt. Spock pondered for a moment what that would mean now that Chekhov was dead, repeating to himself a Vulcan mantra about accepting that which could not be changed; then he rose as if every muscle in his body ached, and went to get Sulu.

It was not logical. Chekhov and Sulu were gone and no rearranging of their bodies would change that. But they were human, and they had been left abandoned for too long. For reasons he could not name, the disrespect bothered him.

"Spock," Jim said, "Look at this."

Spock went to his Captain's side and examined the object Kirk was holding.

"It's a photon grenade, "Kirk said, "But someone has been tampering with it."

"Someone turned it into a basic explosive device. This one malfunctioned and did not detonate on impact." Spock had pried it open and was checking the changes that had been made to the basic structure. "I suspect it was Sulu and Chekhov."

Jim stared at him. "How would they know how to do that?"

Spock's eyebrow went up again. "They once rigged the computer game in Rec One into a miniature transporter to deliver devices that produced a foul odor into the private quarters of some of their shipmates. I have no doubt they could figure this out with some ease."

"They used a miniature transporter to send stink bombs all over the ship?" Jim paraphrased, incredulous.

Spock frowned. "I believe that is what I said," he glanced sideways at his Captain, "I have suspected Lt. Kyle was also involved, but never delved into the matter deeply enough to ascertain that. They were celebrating an Earth custom known as 'April Fools'?"

Jim looked inward, remembering. Sulu was a brilliant pilot but prone to mischief if not kept busy; and what Sulu didn't think of, Chekhov did. Jim had often thought that if one lied the other would swear to it, though he knew neither would ever lie to him. Sulu, in his own way, was as calm and reliable as Spock. He would have been the leader of the pair as they raced through ductwork on a suicide mission. It would have been Sulu who kept Chekhov's hot temper under control, who kept the younger soul going in the face of incredible odds. It would have been Chekhov cracking jokes and making terrible one liners to ease the tension. Sulu had come to the Enterprise as a complete man and Jim found himself wondering now where Sulu had gotten his sense of peace, his seeming fearlessness in the face of death.

A ship, a galaxy, without them seemed impossible. Each death had carved away another piece of Jim Kirk's soul. Now they were beginning to find the most devoted and well-loved of his crew members: Alpha Shift. He was withering inside a little at time.

A flower dying in the desert…. The memory came to him as a soft voice, called up through time, but he could not quite place it. He whispered it to himself, just as he thought he remembered it, as something heard and repeated.

It was not whispered so softly that Spock's incredible Vulcan hearing didn't catch it however.

"Captain?"

"Sulu," Jim said as a deflection."I never left him in command enough, never gave him enough time away from the helm. Command is in his blood. He already had the brains and temperment for it and I never gave him a chance."

He met Spock's eyes miserably. The Vulcan hesitated only briefly. He had trained himself over the last five years to give this man his unvarnished opinion and the truth as he knew it, even in the worst moments, even when the truth forced him to admit painfully "I don't know." He had also learned, by watching his Vulcan father interact with his Terran mother, that he could often lessen the blow of the truth by the tone of his voice and look in his eyes.

"No, you did not," Spock agreed, softly, "Sulu reminded me of you in many ways; though Chekhov did even moreso. Sulu had the same ability to remain in charge, calm even in a crisis. Chekhov had your raw energy. I've no doubt they would both have become exemplary starship captains."

Kirk slumped against a wall, drained for a moment. He was sick of it now; sick of the smells, the vision of his ship as a ruined battlefield. The loss of his crew, his _friends._ Spock took him by the forearm, a gesture of support and incredible bravery. Jim was raw with emotion. His entire being throbbed with pain. He doubted any amount of Vulcan mental shielding would block it, yet Spock had touched him without hesitation.

It gave him courage. He straightened as if to physically shake off the sorrow, looked at Spock and nodded.

"Let's go. We still need to find a way up."

Even though Jim appeared to have recovered, Spock considered suggesting that they find a place to stop, to rest, maybe even to eat. Jim had been under considerable strain from the moment they had dropped out of the time bubble; and the worst was yet to come.

But Jim Kirk would just reject it. He would continue moving until he finally broke down entirely. Spock adjusted his own metabolism to compensate. When Jim finally crashed, he intended to be there to hold him up.


	10. Chapter 10

They climbed carefully over deadfalls of overturned furniture and metal debris, some of which looked as if it had been used as sad attempts to make barricades against the aliens. As they approached the hall that contained the Science Labs, Kirk felt Spock suddenly stiffen and falter. He glanced first at Spock, then followed his gaze around to the door of Science Three.

It had been wrenched apart by force and was now blocked by the bodies of two invaders. They crept towards them on high alert and found them relatively unscathed. One had a knife buried to the hilt in the breathing slit on his neck. The other had a similar knife hilt sticking out of his eye. They had died instantly but had not been alone.

The room was sprayed with bullet holes and blood. Bodies had been left where they fell. Some of the machinery was smashed and the displays ripped open. Liquids and powders from shattered containers covered the surfaces and dripped onto the carpet to mingle with the blood. Kirk and Spock stepped over the bodies in the doorway slowly.

Kirk stared into the silent abomination. Beside him, Spock took two steps forward and then stopped as if struck. Kirk had to step around him to see what was wrong, but then he, too, stopped.

For a moment, the room faded, suddenly shrouded in white mist as his consciousness simply fought to escape reality. Jim swallowed hard and it cleared. He no longer felt faint, but had gone cold inside, as if his heart and soul had been frozen by an Iowa winter.

Daphne lay on her side against the computer console on the floor. Mercifully, her eyes were closed. Her bloodstained hands were lying limp on the floor, one still clutching a knife. She might have been sleeping except for the hole in her midriff and the stain of blood across her blue uniform. The perfect beauty of her lovely face was marred by the hole in the center of her forehead. The carpet beneath her was soak almost black with blood. A belt hung with knives was tied around her waist. Three of them were missing.

Jim tried to imagine it - the sound of the invaders forcing the door, the science team bracing and taking what cover they could, Daphne waiting to take out the first two coming through the opening. Something inside his head was screaming but the room remained silent. He wrenched his gaze away from the impossible imagine of his sister lying dead in the Science Lab and looked at Spock - at his brother-in-law, though he hardly ever thought of him that way. He and Spock were bound by friendship and loyalty and mutual respect. The bounds of law seemed superfluous in the face of that.

But they were also bound by love for this one lovely woman; the one who had been taken from them both by an implacable foe. Daphne - whose beauty had been like the dawn bursting over the sea, whose smile had captivated every man in the room, whose independent spirit, intelligence and scientific curiosity had been enough to ensnare his Vulcan First Office- was lying motionless on the floor in a pool of her own blood.

Spock seemed carved from glass, strong but ultimately fragile. His eyes were lethal and fixed, cold and black as stone. He was barely breathing. Jim was once again suddenly, sharply aware that Spock was Vulcan, and could be very dangerous. He had known Spock long enough to have seen the Vulcan in two kinds of stillness: one when he was calm and at ease, and one when he was fighting the need to attack. It was not the same as preparing to fight, to defend his ship - or his Captain - with his own life if necessary. It was a stillness that meant the Vulcan was willing and ready to tear something into very tiny pieces with his bare hands.

Swallowing the irrational fear that Spock would shatter if he touched him, Jim took him by the forearm.

"Spock," he said, urgent and commanding. When there was no reaction, Jim gripped him more firmly and shook him slightly. He softened his voice until it was full of shared pain and empathy, "Spock."

Spock's intake of air was harsh and short. He blinked and lowered his eyes to the floor, his head bowed. As Jim watched, he closed his eyes and shivered.

Spock….._shivered._

Jim was suddenly terrified.

He could feel the thundering Vulcan pulse beating beneath the hand that still held tight to Spock's forearm. An ancient power was throbbing through the Vulcan, demanding that Spock now seek out those who had done this and wipe their existence from the galaxy. Unless Spock could tap into disciplines instilled him from the cradle, he might descend into the violent madness that had nearly destroyed his race.

"Spock," Jim said again, trying to pull his friend back from the edge of an abyss, "She took your Bridge rotation. She should have been on the Bridge. What was she doing in here? What were they doing?"

Spock looked up, dazed, glancing around the Lab and assessed the shattered containers, the dripping liquids and scattered powders.

"She had them…." He paused and swallowed. His voice burned, "making explosives."

Jim's hand fell away in shock. It meant most of the damage to his ship had been done by his own crew, in an attempt to defeat a foe impervious to phasers.

"Explosives! She's an archaeologist!" He protested."Archaeologists don't blow things up."

Spock looked at him finally and Jim could see the horrible, wretched pain in his eyes - pain that could not be released and could not be endured.

"She is a scientist," Spock paused again, thinking of his brave beautiful wife, "and a Kirk."

Jim heard it for the compliment it was. If he closed his eyes he could see her - at the science station, on the Bridge. He could see her the day he had been privileged to perform the ceremony that married her to his best friend. He remembered the way she had looked the day Sam had introduced them and announced - to his shock and delight - they had a little sister.

_Sam_…. And now Daphne. He had lost both his siblings and was alone.

The pain was so intense it made him feel ill.

If Spock went berserk and started destroying that which was already destroyed, Kirk might join him.

But Spock moved forward, almost normally, and went to kneel beside his wife. He lifted her gently in his arms, stood effortlessly and carried her into his office.

The damage wasn't as bad in the office. The computer was smashed but the walls were free of holes and phaser burns. Spock slowly lowered Daphne to the floor and arranged her so that she was lying peacefully with her hands crossed over her waist. He knelt beside her for a time, resting the tips of his fingers on the back of her hand.

Jim watched from the doorway. It hurt to breathe but he forced himself anyway. For the first time since this whole nightmare had begun, he had lost the strength and support of his First Officer.

Spock needed him now.

"Spock," Jim said, and then waited until the Vulcan turned his head enough to look up at him. "When we came into this time, you reacted to having your bond with her severed."

Spock nodded and drew in a long hard looked back at his wife's body. His eyes were a cold, dark litany to the loss he was experiencing. "I can maintain the bond over vast distances. We lose our ability to communicate effectively but are still aware of each other," he shook his head then, very slowly, "But I cannot maintain it when the distance is time."

Jim almost smiled sadly. Spock made it sound like that was some personal failing of his. Jim noted that he had also not stopped speaking of Daphne in the present tense. Some part of the Vulcan was resisting the idea that Daphne was gone.

"She must have felt it too," Jim said, "What would she had thought, in that moment when you were first suspended in time? When she lost contact with you?"

"That I was dead," his voice was rough, as if forcing the words, "Occam's Razor would dictate it. There would be no other logical conclusion, nothing on which she could base any other hypothesis."

Jim absorbed that. He went and squatted down beside Spock, offering him the comfort of his presence. He avoided looking at his sister.

"Pick the most obvious answer. When you hear hoofbeats, think horses and not zebras," Jim paraphrased.

Spock considered that, glad to have something else to occupy his mind.

"Essentially," he said, finally, not quite up to a discussion of the law of parsimony with his Captain.

"She would have reported that to Scott," Jim concluded. "They would all think that you, at least, were dead. When I didn't answer the hails either, they would have concluded the same thing about me."

Jim sat down on the floor and let his knee barely brush against Spock's leg. _I'm here_.

Spock was unmoving, silent as snow on a moonless winter night.

_What are you doing right now, _Jim wondered, _What Vulcan discipline keeps you from screaming? What comfort can I offer that won't make it worse?_

"They knew where we were," Jim went on, his voice calm and reasonable as he reconstructed the actions his crew must have taken, "Thomson's security team was looking for us in the cargo bay when they were attacked."

"Logical," Spock agreed. He was holding Daphne's hand now, not just touching it.

Jim kept his eyes on the Vulcan's stone-carved profile, hoping to draw him further into the discussion.

"How much time could have elapsed, Spock, between Daphne reacting to the loss of your bond, telling Scott, and a security team being dispatched?"

Spock turned like an owl, moving only his head.

"She would have known immediately," he said, "Uhura would have tried to contact me, and then you. Scott would have dispatched a security team within seconds of finding a lack of response from us."

"Seconds, Spock," Jim repeated, urgently, "Only minutes for Thomson's team to arrive at the Cargo Bay."

Understanding was chasing the black shadows from Spock's eyes.

"That explains how the invaders got on board," Spock said, "As we surmised earlier, whatever held us in time, must have also been holding them as well. Perhaps it was preset, or is normally activated by the one they were looking for. Logically, the ship could have been manned by a single individual while the rest were held in a time suspension."

"It had to be that cylinder, Spock, and we didn't really do anything to the cylinder, prior to it activating," Jim mused, "It must have been preset. We were there when it activated and it held us within that same preset time, like a cycle. Perhaps they need this one they were looking for to set it for them again. For all we know, it isn't even their technology. They may be a mercenary force in the service of some more technically advanced race."

"They escaped the destruction of their vessel," Spock agreed in a flat dull tone,"Only to come back into the time stream to find themselves apparently captive of a destroying enemy."

Jim raked his fingers through his hair in frustration.

"It's all so damned stupid, Spock," he growled, "The whole thing is a giant misunderstanding and they all died because of it."

"Risk is our business. _You_ said that," Spock reminded him, "It's why we are out here. They died as Star Fleet officers, defending their ship, and showing extraordinary courage under fire."

Their eyes met again and Jim knew he had his First Officer - his _friend_ - back. He had lost his siblings, but not yet the man who called him a brother. He was humbled that Spock - who had just suffered a devasting personal loss - could say something like that.

They would both mourn, later. For now they would keep searching for answers.

"We have to find Bones," Jim said, insistently.

Another shadow of pain flickered across Spock's face. The hand that was holding his wife's trembled slightly. Jim wondered again what the Vulcan was thinking. He and McCoy fought like brothers - ready to rip each other's hearts out and defend each other to the death all at the same time. Maybe the loss of Daphne and the loss of McCoy would be too much. It might be too much even for him.

"May I ask why?" Spock asked.

Jim shook his head and attempted a lopsided grin. "You won't like the answer."

Spock sighed. "You have a _feeling," _he guessed.

Jim cocked his head. "How did you know?"

Spock's only answer was a long steady stare. Jim had known Spock long enough to have often seen warmth, humor, even affection deep in the Vulcan's eyes. At the moment there was nothing but the cold, dark emptiness of space. He wondered if either of them would ever truly feel peace again.


	11. Chapter 11

The climb to Sickbay was grueling, requiring multiple twists and turns, backtracking and even - to Kirk's horror - almost getting lost in his own ship. At the upper levels, where his crew had taken a stand, there was little left that was recognizable. Getting into sickbay meant waiting for Spock to lift huge pieces of debris out of the way. At one point Spock had to hold most of a ceiling over his head while Kirk squeezed past to the other side, leaving his First Officer to duck out from under it milimeters before it crashed down again. One section of the ship was completely blocked by security doors and a warning light, weakly flashing a hull breach and loss of atmosphere.

Kirk concentrated on moving forward. His crew was dead. His ship was dying. The struggle kept him sane.

Sickbay itself had been spared some of the destruction suffered in other parts of the ship. It's hapless occupants had not. They found Chapel shot down, sprawled in the doorway to the biobeds. Everyone in the beds was dead, the readouts above their heads eerily silent, the arrows pinned to the bottom of the board. As with every place they had been, blood soaked the blankets and floors. It seemed every centimeter of the floor was covered by the bodies of those who had been brought there for help and met death instead.

As he had too many times before, Spock carried a fallen shipmate to a more dignified temporary resting place. Adding her bloodstains to the ones already covering his uniform, he put Christine on an empty biobed and covered her with a blanket. Resting his hands briefly on the edge of the bed he paused over her hidden form. Jim hovered in the doorway, waiting until Spock finally looked at him.

"All she ever wanted was to be loved," the Vulcan said, unexpectedly.

Jim swallowed the ache in his throat, for Christine, for the Vulcan hybrid who had learned to be so patient and understanding of the humans with whom he served.

"McCoy said she was the best head nurse he ever had but she had a knack for picking the wrong men, Spock," he said, comfortingly. "That wasn't your fault. In the end I think she understood and was happy for you."

Spock nodded and returned to his Captain's side. He was paler than usual. His skin was a sickly washed out greenish-gray. The stress was growing and Jim wondered if they should have stopped at some point to rest.

But where? There hadn't been a place on the ship that had escaped unscathed, no where that would have given them a respite from the carnage.

Unwilling but still driven as if by demons, they began to search sickbay for McCoy.

They found him in his office, lying on the floor by his chair, staring at the ceiling with unseeing eyes. There was a bullet hole in the center of his forehead. The wound had bled profusively, coating his face.

_Too much...too much... _Kirk collapsed finally, dropping into the chair in front of the desk as the lifeblood drained from his face and the last sliver of his soul shrank and died. He wasn't sure how long he sat there, gazing at nothing. He was vaguely aware that Spock had briefly vanished and then reappeared with a blanket. Jim knew what it was for, but he couldn't - god help him he _couldn't_ - watch this time. He set his elbows on his knees and dropped his face into his hands, blocking the truth and the horror and fighting off the pain with all the strength he had left. Time seemed to slow down. All he could hear was his own labored breathing and the pounding of his aching heart.

When he finally looked up again, he found Spock sitting in McCoy's chair. Spock was studiously and dispassionately fixated on McCoy's computer screen. The concentration on his face was intense.

"Spock, for god's sakes," Jim murmured, for once unable to understand the Vulcan ability to remain unaffected no matter what the circumstances.

Dark eyes met his.

"He was recording his log. It was still running. It recorded everything that happened, with the invaders. The conversation is...fascinating," Spock's voice was hoarse. His tone asked for understanding.

And in a way Jim understood. Listening to it was a way to honor McCoy's last moments, to perhaps give their friend a chance to help them in their quest for answers. But silence was the only thing in sickbay, except for their voices.

"You're listening to it?" Jim asked, incredulous, "I don't hear anything."

"I changed the decibel level. I didn't want to disturb you," Spock replied.

Jim was struck numb for a moment , gaping at his First Officer in silence.

"I want to hear it," he said, finally, sitting up straighter in the chair.

"Jim," Spock said, in that voice that clearly said '_I don't think that's a good idea.'_

"I want to hear it, Spock," Jim replied, in that voice that clearly said '_That's an order.'_

They understood each other too well for Spock to argue. Spock however did not move instantly to obey the order. He stood and opened a cabinet on the wall, took out a glass and a bottle of amber liquid. He poured a very generous amount into the glass and set it on the desk before Jim.

Jim gave him a rueful look and then downed it in one swallow. Spock sat back down and returned the sound to its usual level, keyed it to play from the beginning and then leaned back with his fingers tented in front of him while they listened.

For most of his carreer Leonard McCoy had managed to escape the worst duty any doctor could face - combat triage. The last few hours had been hell, deciding who would die, who might live a few more miserable hours, holding out hope in the face of hopelessness. He had lost count of how many had been brought there, or stumbled in bleeding in dozens of places. He pronounced one more person dead, tossed bloody gloves into the waste receptacle and then staggered to his office and turned on the log recorder. He sat for a good two minutes just staring, gathering scattered thoughts and trying to find his voice. He sat wondering if it would even make any difference. There was a distinct possibility that the ship would fall to the invaders and be taken with them. No one from Star Fleet might ever hear this report. In the deepest part of his soul, McCoy had already accepted that at some point he himself would be slain.

And there as nothing he could do about it - nothing he could do in the face of such odds. His brilliant medical skills could not bring people back to life or cure multiple wounds from projectile weapons; especially not when they came through the door by tens and twenties.

He began to record his log entry of dead and dying in a voice so devoid of emotion he thought Spock might be proud of him. From outside his office he heard the door swish open and wondered how many more were being brought to him. The screams of horror brought him to his feet and rushing out into the foyer.

Two invaders in their camoflage armor, holding deadly looking rifles as if they knew exactly how to use them, stood menacingly in the center of the room. Chapel was frozen in the doorway to the biobeds, pale and terrified.

"Who is in charge?" It was a flat, mechanical voice, no doubt being generated by the Universal Translator.

"I am," McCoy said, standing his ground.

"Where is the Time Shaper?" The robot voice asked.

"What is the Time Shaper?" McCoy asked. He used every ounce of his Star Fleet and medical training. First, ask the patient for the symptoms. He began backing towards his office, luring them away from his panicked medical staff and injured patients. "We can't help you find something if we don't know what it is!"

"That which brought us here."

"If it brought you here then you should know where it is," McCoy said, too impatient to be sensibly frightened. "Didn't you have to program it?"

"Yes."

"Then it's a device of some kind?"

"Yes."

"It was in your ship when we brought it on board?"

"After you destroyed our ship. It would have survived."

"We didn't destroy your ship. We found it," McCoy's throat had gone dry and he longed for the bourbon he knew was in the cabinet behind him. "How would it have survived? How did you survive? There was nothing there when we found your ship!"

There was a long pause in which the invaders seemed to be communicating with each other. McCoy had the impression they were considering whether he really needed to know. _Keep them talking, _McCoy thought.

"The Time Shaper was given to us by the gods," was the eventual reply, "It survives."

McCoy's mind was racing. 'Gods' for some races were simply more advanced races. "Then your gods gave you the ability to travel through time? With this device?"

They were silent again for a time.

"Where is the Time Shaper?" It repeated.

"We think our Captain and First Officer have it. They vanished as soon as you appeared," McCoy said, taking a chance at sharing that information. His heart leapt. If this device sent people traveling around in time, Jim and Spock might still be alive.

"Where are they?"

The soulless voice grated on his frayed nerves. It was worse than talking to Spock.

"I told you," McCoy snarled, "They vanished. They probably activated this device without knowing they were doing it."

"Yes," the alien agreed. Neither seemed distressed by this probablity. "We will know this soon."

"How?" McCoy asked.

This time McCoy knew he wasn't going to get an answer. The alien raised the deadly weapon it had been holding loosely and fired it at point blank range.

"We will know this soon," the awful alien voice announced and Spock abruptly cut the transmission.

Jim had been concentrating on absorbing the information and listening once again to that beloved gravelly voice bravely facing down danger. He looked up at Spock in surprise, and then understanding dawned.

"They killed him after that, didn't they? They knew he couldn't tell them anything else."

"Yes," Spock said, bluntly."Then it is most likely that they killed everyone else in here."

Jim tried not to picture it but couldn't stop his racing imagination. He had seen what death at the hands of these invaders looked like. He wanted to stop it, but the image came anyway - the weapon raised to his friend's forehead, the explosion, McCoy falling backwards as blood poured down his face, the screams and panic that must have followed. Spock was right to have stopped the recording. Jim couldn't imagine living the rest of his life with those sounds echoing in his head. He regretted that Spock would. He dropped his face into his hands again and locked his mind against the pain and shock, grinding his teeth together.

"Jim," Spock's voice rumbled. He was becoming deeply concerned about Kirk's mental state. He had seen starship captains go mad over much less than this.

Wishing he could just become numb, Jim managed to look up.

"As we guessed, we were not held suspended in time, but thrown forward. They call the device the 'Time Shaper.' If it functions as I believe it does, we may be able to use it to return to the moments before any of this happened."

Hope flared like a match in a cave. Jim stopped breathing, waiting for Spock to continue.

"There is a hypothesis that all things are happening at the same time. We experience this in a linear manner. But if you imagine time as a string, one should be able to bend the string so that any point intersects with another point. I propose that this is the function of their time traveling device."

Jim exploded out of the chair so fast he knocked it over. For a moment Spock did fear for his Captain's sanity. He braced to stand, uncertain what would happen next. Determination blazed on Jim's face. Spock had seen that look before.

"I want them back," Jim stated it as a fact, "I don't care how long it takes. I don't care if you and I are both old and gray when it happens, I want them back."

Reasonably, Spock said, "It is an alien technology, Jim, one I am totally unfamiliar with."

"Then get familiar with it," Jim ordered, as if it were the easiest thing in the world. "The Universal Translator is still working on the language, based on what Uhura programmed into it. Spock! We can get them back."

Spock steepled his fingers again, joining the sensitive receptors in the tips and completing his own circuit, quelling with Vulcan discipline the unsettled emotions that were distracting his thought process. If he had any chance at all of doing what Kirk was asking he would need all the control he had ever been taught.

"Spock," Jim said, again, asking, pleading.

And just as he had every time Jim had asked him for the impossible, Spock nodded quietly and said,

"All right."


	12. Chapter 12

He had wanted to come to the Bridge. Jim was confronted by that fact as he hunkered beside the fallen body of his Chief Engineer. He had known Scotty didn't go to Engineering during the invasion. They had found DeSalle there, obviously the leader of the valiant group that tried to hold Engineering. They had all died, as mercilessly, hopelessly and gruesomely as all the rest of his crew had died. He had known then that Scotty had stayed on the Bridge, holding the center seat as long as he could, making the hardest decisions of his life.

They had found him lying on the floor in sticky, drying pools of blood, in front of Spock's Science station. Ensign Evans of Security was face down by the lift doors. Lt. Palmer was collapsed and stiff over the communications station. The automatic distress call was still weakly signaling. Arex and Riley were dead on the floor at the helm, their blood had run together and drenched the carpet.

They had moved Scotty, reverently, so that Spock could interface with the main computer. The Vulcan was bent over the console, reluctant to sit in the blood spattered chair.

"Captain," he paused and had to clear his throat, "This will require your override command."

Kirk rose like a very old man. "What?"

"The computer is waiting for the final code to begin the countdown to self-destruct."

Prickles of ice water rained down his spine. His throat dried to the consistency of Vulcan sand. All this time... all this time they had been crawling and struggling and climbing through a floating bomb waiting to explode. Desperation pulled his voice out of his throat.

"Computer! This is the Captain! Abort destruct sequence, code 1-2-3-continuity."

The countdown on the clock vanished. The computer's voice, broken and splintered and weak, said, "Destruction sequence aborted."

Kirk slumped forward and only kept from falling by catching his hands on the console beside Spock. He was drained suddenly. He glanced at Spock, but the Vulcan was focused on his work. The soft blue glow of the emergency lighting and the science viewer cast his face in shadows. He looked demonic, possessed. Kirk shivered. He needed all this to stop for a moment...

And he knew it would not.

Time, he sighed, had become both their enemy and their ally. He sank down his spine set against the console until he sat loose-limbed on the floor, bone weary from staring too long across the expanse of a lost battlefield. He scrubbed the heels of his hands against his gritty eyelids and leaned back against the console, eyes closing tight.

When he opened then again, Spock was gazing down at him gravely.

"Is there something you require, Captain?" he asked.

A burst of hysterical laughter bubbled up inside Jim and he swallowed it convulsively. He would not let this drive him mad - _he would NOT._

"I've already asked you for the impossible, Spock," he said, finally.

Lights and shadows played across satanic features that had become even more beloved over the last few hours. The scientific brain was at work, calculations taking place at breakneck speeds, even as Spock tried to formulate an answer for him. Something flared in night-dark eyes, something deep and abiding; something so complex Jim could not even begin to guess what elements comprised it.

"Hypothetically it is not impossible," Spock said, "Were it, I would have told you. It is illogical for me to pursue a path that is clearly impossible."

Jim bit back a sad smile and allowed himself the misty memory of Daphne paraphrasing Lewis Carrol by claiming that Spock could do six impossible things before breakfast. Daphne had loved Spock and she understood him in ways Jim did not, as if she had acquired all the pieces of a puzzle that was visible only to her. Jim valued Spock's 'alieness' and counted on it. Daphne had understood the root of that alieness and nurtured it, while at the same time thriving in its presence.

"We came so close, Spock," Jim said, at last, "Scotty was going to destroy her before allowing the Bridge to be taken. If he had succeeded..."

He paused unable to go on. Spock finished it for him, "You and I would have come back into the time stream in space, surrounded by whatever was left of the ship."

"And died instantly," Jim said, unnecessarily.

Spock inhaled and looked as if he was about to explain in detail exactly how long it would take to die in a vacuum. Jim quelled him with a look.

Spock turned his attention back to the computer, lean fingers dancing over the console. Kirk looked around, mostly at the ceiling, briefly at his command chair. This was what he had left - the Enterprise and his First Officer.

The Enterprise, even as badly damaged within the titanium walls as she was, would keep them safe from the cold death of space. They would be warm, have breathable air, light, the significant miracle of gravity enabling them to walk around, even food if they ever discovered they wanted to eat again. He had taken all of that for granted, distracted as he had been by the aftermath of the violence that had taken place within these pristine walls. He looked out the stars on the dim view screen. The Enterprise was drifting and they had made no attempt to stop her. Without her crew she had no destination, no purpose but to drift slowly among the stars.

But she still functioned, still worked, still kept he and Spock alive so that they could return the ones who were her true heart and soul.

_That's my girl, _Jim thought, _that's my good girl..._

But still...

"Spock," he began, "the ship's systems..."

"Running a diagnostic now," was the even and calm reply. Not surprising. Spock was almost always a step ahead of him. The Vulcan glanced at him, "If we are to be here until we are 'old and gray' as you put it, we will need to conserve power. I've shut down life support in all nonessential areas. We will have to return to Cargo Bay 2. I have rigged a bypass there so I can access the main computer."

Jim managed a wry smile. "Got it all figured out, huh?" he asked softly.

Spock leaned back and steepled his fingers in front of him. "Not the important part," he admitted. He met Jim's gaze and for a moment some of the harsh Vulcan shielding fell away and left only Spock. "I would very much like my wife back," he said, frankly.

Not for the first time since this nightmare had begun the two shared a long look. They were bound, he and Spock. Not in the same way that Spock was bound to Daphne, but it was love nontheless: friendship, comraderie, loyalty, respect, admiration, dependence on one other for the things the other lacked, even the understanding that they would do what they wanted and be who they were, bound at the moment even by the shared loss of their friends and family. Somehow the Iowa farmboy and the Vulcan/Terran hybrid had forged a bond that had, until those moment, filled in each other's missing pieces.

Now they both had too many missing pieces and too many of them were shared.

"We'll get her back, Spock," Kirk said, in that voice that defied the gods and the heavens and fate, "We'll get them all back."


	13. Chapter 13

Jim awoke abruptly, startled out of unconsciousness filled with nightmare images, into the awareness that he lived; and his body ached and cold metal was digging into his face. Various parts of him were also pressed against hard metal and protested until he shifted one hip. He shut his eyes again, remembering that the images were not all nightmare and shadow.

He had slept, obviously, on the deck of Cargo Bay 2. It was inevitable really. Even he could only push his body so far. Spock had insisted he eat and drink and, as sleep cleared from his brain, he seemed to have a vague memory of warm fingers landing lightly on his brow and then nothing.

It seemed his sorcerous First Mate had mind melded him into sleep. Jim rolled over on his back and blinked up into the dim lights on the ceiling. He thought about being angry with Spock for knocking him out. Metal floors were not conducive to restful sleep, especially not after the hours of crawling and climbing. His muscles ached and his knees and shoulders were complaining bitterly.

"Feeling better?"

Spock's voice chased the last of the sleep from his head. He sat up and stretched until his spine cracked. His face contorted for a moment as he rubbed the back of his neck and turned his head right and left.

"Better than what?" he asked, rhetorically.

"Than before you slept," Spock supplied.

"Not really," Jim said, drily. He shifted so he was looking at Spock, "Any luck?"

Spock, dusty and disheveled, still wearing a uniform shirt covered in the blood of his shipmates, was in the exact same position Jim recalled him being in before he fell asleep. He was seated cross legged on the floor surrounded by tools and diagnostics. He looked at Jim and lifted an eyebrow.

"Luck?" he asked, "No, only careful analytical and scientific investigation, combined with Vulcan hearing."

Jim stretched again to hide his smile.

"Tell me," he demanded, moving over closer to the Vulcan.

The key, they had discovered, was in the language that Uhura and M'Ress uncovered. The device - the Time Shaper - was 'programmed' using a series of tones set in a particular frequency. The problem now was finding the exact set of tones to return to the moments just after they initially were pulled forward.

"I am still working on coordinating sounds and frequencies into the time increments used by the invaders, but I believe I am nearly done."

"That's what I remember from before you tricked me into sleeping," Jim stated bluntly. "Again!"

The Vulcan returned him only a guileless look. "Jim, we are neither one of us indestructible ourselves. We've been doing this for quite some time."

They had - for hours that had felt like days, in which Kirk had fought his worst enemy. Himself. He found he would much rather have charged after the invaders with guns blazing, crawled through the ducts with Sulu and Chekhov using grenades, even faced them armed only with knives.

Math and Science were Spock's department. Language was Uhura's. At one point, weary beyond exhaustion, he had asked rhetorically, "Where's Uhura when I need her?"

Spock, whose soul was more poetic and romantic than he would ever admit, had looked at him with great intensity, lifted his tricorder and replied, "Here. She is here. All the work she did translating this language is with us and we would have far more to do if she had not gotten this far."

Mollified, shoring up his determination, Kirk had forged on with the translations. He had worked until Spock had apparently decided the Captain had made one mistake too many and put him to sleep.

"Well what can I do now?" he asked.

"Now," Spock answered, "we need to coordinate their time increments to ours and find the combination that will return us to the exact moment we need."

"And you of course know the exact moment we need," Jim mused.

"Of course." It was stated in a matter-of-fact way.

Jim glanced at the small computer screen Spock was working from and got an instant headache from the equations marching across it. Some of it appeared to be in Vulcan, which Spock always insisted was a more logical and precise mathematical system. When Jim had challenged him, claiming that math was surely the only true Universal language and even Humans couldn't have screwed it up that badly, his only reply had been an ironically arched set of eyebrows and a quiet amusement that lay deep in dark eyes.

"All right, then show me," Jim said, grimly determined to grasp this and participate. It was only time afterall, a simple one to one ratio.

And Spock showed him. He also showed him the rod that slid from the bottom of the cylinder and was used to change the settings. Fortunately, it appeared to be fairly straight forward. The 'gods" who had created this gift had intended it to be "user friendly." It seemed to solidify Spock's belief that it was a technology from an advanced race given to a less advanced race, for some undetermined reason.

There was certainly other evidence for advanced races being taken for gods. Ever since their meeting with the Being who called himself Apollo, more and more evidence had arisen of such things being possible. It explained Daphne's native planet of Thrace and its tales of humans being brought there by gods and its strong similarities to Earth's ancient Greece. Their empathic abilities were said to be a gift from the gods.

Jim knew that Spock was being eaten alive by curiosity about the aliens and their "gods." But he was far more driven by his need to save his ship, his friends and his wife. Spock had proven more than once that he would risk his own life and limbs in the pursuit of knowledge, but not anyone else's.

He also knew his Science Officer had a piece of gragonoth hide and forensic evidence he could carry easily; plus all the data stored in his tricorder. Once they changed the time line, Spock would have a puzzle difficult enough to keep him busy for a while. The Enterprise had just a disasterous first contact with an alien race. He hoped htat Spock and he might be able to prevent something similar from happening again in the future. He just hoped the obsessive Vulcan didn't want to hunt down a real, live gragonoth as part of his investigation.

At last Spock keyed a sequence into the metal rod, making it glow with an odd orange/yellow light. They exchanged a curious glance but as neither had any idea what that meant, they shrugged it off. They were committed.

"All in, Captain?" Spock asked.

Jim nodded. He'd taught Spock that phrase when he had taught him to play poker - which he had discovered was a really bad idea. It was not wise to play a game like that against an opponent with the math skills and memory, not to mention the ability to control every muscle in his face and twinkle in his eye, of the Vulcan.

"All in, Spock," he said, putting utter faith and trust in the Spock's abilities. "Let's see where we go."

Spock pushed the rod all the way into the cylinder. As before, it gave them little warning. The ship seemed to lurge back and forth without moving them at all. The lights danced and flickered.

Then the light vanished, leaving them in a silent shroud of mist.


	14. Chapter 14

Montgomery Scott was restless. As a rule he was not a man given to sitting, unless there were technical journals to read. Sitting in the center seat on the Bridge did not give one much time to read. Sitting in the center seat while the Enterprise did little but cruise effortlessly through space - and while there was an alien technology waiting to be explored - was pure torture. He shifted and tried not to look bored and annoyed. He glanced at the clock and saw that it would only be another hour or so before he could declare his Bridge duties fulfilled and return to his first love, Engineering.

He had just begun wondering how badly it would affect the crew if a senior officer slipped off duty early when Daphne suddenly gasped as if she was in pain. In the time it took Scott to spin around in the chair, Uhura had already crossed the short distance to the science station. Daphne was bent over, one arm held tightly over her waist, her head resting in her other hand.

"What is it, lass?" Scotty asked, sounding like a concerned uncle.

"I'm not sure," she murmured, and then realized that didn't sound very professional. She looked over at Scott and tried to explain, "My connection to Spock, the mental bond we have... It... blinked, for lack of a better description."

"Blinked?" Uhura said.

"It was there, then it wasn't, now it's back."

Uhura went to her station and hit a toggle. "Bridge to Mr. Spock."

Instantly a familiar voice replied, "Spock here. Is something wrong?"

In spite of the certainty of her mind link, Daphne felt a deep rush of relief. She stood and went to stand beside Uhura.

"Spock, it's me," she said.

There was a long, long pause. Waiting, Daphne searched along the mindlink but there was no communication from him, only the strong awareness of his consciousness.

Before he could answer, Sulu announced,

"Mr. Scott, the doors of Cargo Bay Two are opening. Everything is being blown out, sir."

Spock's voice came loud and firm over the comm.

"Let it go, Mr. Scott. That a direct order."

The Bridge crew exchanged mystified glances.

"Spock, what's happening?" Daphne asked. Concern and confusion shadowed her lovely face. "A moment ago I thought our link had been severed, but then it returned."

There was another long, long pause. Then, "There is an explanation, which I cannot give you at this moment. I can only ask that you trust me and wait."

It was possible that no one in the history of Vulcan,Thrace, or Terra had ever trusted someone more than Daphne trusted Spock. It seemed impossible that he would need to ask her to do so.

In the silence that followed, though she knew the communication channel was still open, the link between them became like a sun about to go super nova, so bright and intense she attempted to shield herself from it. Sensing that, Spock backed off.

"Where are you?" she asked, breathless.

"Here," he said, as the turbolift doors opened.

Kirk and Spock catapulted on the Bridge as if they were being whipped. Daphne's eyes sought Spock the way she would seek a beacon on a cold dark night. But he did spare her so much as a glance. He and Jim seemed riveted by the derelict that could now be seen floating just off their starboard bow. Scotty bolted out of the center seat barely in time to avoid Jim sitting on him as Kirk took command.

"Chekhov, lay in a course, anywhere. Nearest StarBase if possible. Sulu, get us out of here, best possible speed," Kirk barked.

There was a chorus of aye, sir's and a flurry of activity. The Enterprise hummed and vibrated. The crew automatically adjusted to the slight shift and pull as the gravity well struggled to keep up with the sudden change in speed and direction. The stars sped by on the view screen until they were almost a blur.

Spock moved to the deserted science station and bent over his viewer. Uhura kicked Daphne lightly in the shins, and mouthed '_What's going on?'_ But all Daphne could do was shrug and shake her head. Leaving the Communications Officer no more enlightened than she herself was, Daphne went to stand beside her husband. He had asked her to wait and so she would.

But from experience, she knew Vulcan silences could be very long. She gave up staring expectantly at Spock and turned her attention to her brother. She carefully lowered her empathic shields and focused on him.

_Joy. Euphoria. _There was no other words for the emotion radiating from her brother. He was shining inside like a new sun. Mixed with it were relief and a deep pride and tenderness she sensed were being directed at the crew in general. But he looked awful, like he had been in the same uniform for days. In fact, even Spock looked scruffier than usual.

Scott was giving the Captain a long baleful look. Jim smiled at him sympathetically, and perhaps a bit more affectionately than usual.

"She can take it, Scott," he said, "Just for a little bit. Humor me."

"Aye, sir," Scott said, but he sounded dubious. "May I ask if you're staying on the Bridge, sir?"

Scott was all but backing hopefully towards the turbolift.

"Go on. I'll be here for a little while," Kirk said, indulgently, "I know you'd rather be in Engineering."

Scott grinned and nodded before vanishing behind the red doors.

Spock straightened from his viewer, drawing her attention again.

"The derelict is out of sensor range, Captain," his voice was too even, too calm. Daphne watched him suspiciously. Whatever had happened, Spock was deeply, _deeply, _Vulcan at the moment.

Kirk almost deflated with relief, sinking back in his seat and letting his hands rest lightly on the arms.

"Slow us down, Sulu," he ordered, "Warp Four, before our Chief Engineer has a heart attack."

"Aye, sir," Sulu said, but he shot a look at Chekhov as he did so. The Navigator returned a puzzled, uncomfortable look and then resolutely stared at his console.

Kirk hit a button on the arm of his chair and said, "Sickbay."

"McCoy!" The familiar gravelly voice answered, "You mind telling me where we're going in such a hurry?"

Daphne was the only one watching Spock at that moment and the only one likely to notice the fine tremor that ran through his tall frame; and the long look Kirk exchanged with him, that seemed to contain a message only they understood. They had all seen Kirk and Spock communicate with only a look , but this particular look made Daphne's senses tingle. Without question they had just escaped some dire peril that only their Captain and XO understood.

"That's a good question, actually," Kirk muttered, "Chekhov, where are we going?"

"StarBase Six, sir," Chekhov answered, "You said, closest starbase if possible?"

"Yes, yes, that's fine," Kirk said, absently. He raised his voice to address McCoy again, "I'll tell you all about it later? Say, in an hour?"

"All right. My office in an hour," he said. He sounded busy and distracted, "McCoy out."

As soon as the channel with McCoy closed, Jim turned back to the viewscreen. Spock chose that moment to finally look at his wife.

His eyes branded her like hot coals and her heart exploded into life. He spoke to her finally and she was once again reminded how deeply Vulcan he was.

"Aduna'm," he said, in a voice low and husky, "K'nash vey sarlah?" _My wife, come with me?_

Daphne was so caught by the intensity of his gaze, and the alternate reality of being addressed as his wife in Vulcan while on duty, that for a moment she couldn't speak. It may have sounded like an order to anyone who spoke Vulcan, though that was limited to Uhura at the present time. But she knew that by Vulcan custom, he had given her the right to refuse. Still needing to be released from Bridge duty, she frantically tore her eyes away from Spock and sought out the Captain.

"Permission to leave the Bridge, sir?" she asked.

Jim looked back at her with quiet affection. He nodded and jerked a thumb towards the 'lift doors.

"Go on," he said.

She looked back at Spock.

"Ha, adun," she murmured, "K'tu nash vey sarlah."

He strode past her and she rushed to follow him, slipping into the turbolift just as the doors closed. Spock's attention was fixed on the opposite wall. So she simply went and stood beside him, leaning back against the wall and looking at the floor.

"Deck Five," Spock told the computer control and then the 'lift thrummed with the energy that passed between them.

Knowing he was still staring at the opposite wall, Daphne finally dared to look up him again. The cool light inside the 'lift higlighted his dark hair and broad shoulders and reflected lovingly off the classic, perfect lines of his face. He stood encased in silence, and she became even more aware of the bloodstains on his uniform - and clearly none of it was his. A deep disquiet trickled down up her spine. She made no attempt to hide it from him.

He turned finally and speared her with a look that burned with black fire.

"I'm frightening you," he said, and she saw the attempt he made to relax.

She smiled a little and shook her head.

"I could never be afraid of you," she answered, "But you are currently making use of several Vulcan disciplines to maintain your control - don't deny it. My brother is alternately acting like a cat that nearly had got scalded and a child that just got everything he wanted for his birthday. You've both got blood on your uniforms, though none of it is yours and none of it appears to be his. Something has you both on high alert. Whatever that 'something' is, it's a bit frightening."

Spock did not hesitate then to strip his shirt off over his head and let it hit the floor of the 'lift. His body shifted until he was facing her and he raised his hand with the first two fingers extended. She didn't hesitate to mirror her own hand and place it against his. It was as if his hand were a living flame.

"The danger has passed," he said and then shook his head in a self-deprecating way, "It is illogical to be reacting to it still."

Daphne remembered with searing clarity the split second in which her bond with him had vanished. He had felt it too. She was certain of that. She was equally certain he knew why it had happened.

She was also certain, as always, that when he was dressed head to toe in nothing but black, she found him unbearably sexy, no matter the circumstances.

Desire rose in her eyes like a tidal wave. "Perhaps it is not the danger you are reacting to, but rather to what it almost cost us," she suggested. She ran her fingers down his palm, around his wrist and up the back of his hand.

She wanted to kiss him and knew in her blood that he wanted to kiss her too.

They were saved from having to take the lift offline to indulge that particular passion when the doors opened to Deck Five, where their cabin awaited them.

He let her enter the room ahead of him. She stepped inside, careful of the gravity shelf, and sighed with relief when the door slid shut behind him. Spock hesitated just inside the door, dropping the shirt he had brought from the 'lift once more on the floor. When she turned to him she was surprised to see him carefully studying the wall on which they displayed the weapons that were part of their heritage.

"Spock?" she said, softly.

In two long strides he was towering over her. He pulled her close against his body, his palms sliding over the curve of her waist and back. His eyes smoldered into hers, leashed Vulcan passion and possession.

She reached up and cupped the back of his neck, pulling him down into the kiss they had been denied earlier. She kissed him with wild abandon and he returned it as if he wanted to absorb her into his soul. The bond between them fired with iridescence as bright colors of desire lit inside her mind.

When the need for air drove them apart, he turned his attention to the soft skin of her throat. She knew that her uniform was going to be shredded before this was over. Gasping she said,

"You were going to tell me what happened, why our bond disappeared..._oh..gods_..."

He paused and met her eyes again, "I will. Later."

His mouth claimed hers again and Daphne knew it was going to be _much _later...


	15. Chapter 15

"So I stayed on the Bridge for a while and then I came down here," Jim finished. He paused and drained the last of the Kentucky bourbon out of the glass McCoy had provided him. He kept his eyes on the floor a moment longer and then looked up to find blazing blue shock looking back at him.

"My _God,_" McCoy burst out, "If anyone else had told me this I'd say they were crazy!"

"Well, I'm not crazy," Jim said, reaching for the bottle of Bourbon and noting to himself that it had been full when they started, "If it makes you feel better, Spock is telling Daphne the same story, probably a lot faster than I just told you."

"Mind meld," McCoy grunted, "He wouldn't lie to her and he certainly can't lie to her that way."

There was a long silence as McCoy tried to take in the incredible tale Jim had just told him. Jim endured it as long as he could and then said,

"What are you thinking?"

"Spock," McCoy grumbled, shaking his head, "He's a goddam walking miracle and if you tell him I said that, I'll call you a liar."

Jim smiled in a misty way. "I won't tell him," he said, softly. "But you're right. I'm not sure I could have survived it without him." He sat back and stared at the floor for a while. "He brought us back almost to the milisecond of when he had been transported forward; and he reacted more quickly that I did. I think we missed seeing ourselves by a breath. Then he had that device back on board the wreck and was jettisoning it before I could even form a thought. I didn't know Vulcans could move that fast. But that's what happened and only Spock and I will ever remember it."

"Well," McCoy said, "That's probably for the best. Jim, I know why you told me. That's not something you can keep inside. But why did Spock tell Daphne?"

Jim paused to take a drink, "He said he would never be able to keep it from her, that she would always know he was hiding something. Apparently she has become very good at ferreting out his 'untold truths.' "

"Good for her," McCoy said, "He needs someone besides just me to keep him off balance."

"He was devastated by her loss," Jim said, "I'd never seen him like that before. But even then I think he was already formulating the theory of how to get us back. He was too focused on something, especially by the time we found you. It was the conversation with the invaders that you managed to record that solidified it for him. Everyone of you did something that helped us take one more step closer to an answer, even the ones who died just buying time for the Translator to work out their language. I want to give my entire crew commendations for actions they never have to take. I'm proud of them for reasons I can't ever tell them. I have to figure out a way to report an alien race to Star Fleet with no way to tell them how I know about it. They may not believe the truth. I'm not sure I even want to talk about it to anyone, ever again."

"I think telling StarFleet is a good way to get the Enterprise taken away from you and finding yourself locked up for a psychological evaluation, even with your logical second in command swearing to every word of it," McCoy observed. His tone changed from 'friend and confidant' to 'doctor giving an order.' "Look, Jim, you're exhausted. You haven't slept or eaten or had anything to drink except alcohol in hours. You can't make any decisions now. We're on our way to a StarBase. Give the whole crew as much shore leave as you can and get out there with them yourself. It seems to me you have lots of time before you have to tell anyone else what happened, if you ever do."

"Time," Jim said, almost to himself. "We've traveled through it before but I don't think I will ever look at it exactly the same way again. I know Spock regrets the loss of that cylinder. He wanted to study it further. But it's better off lost."

McCoy grunted, "I have to agree with that. Spock has my sympathies about the loss to scientific knowledge, but it doesn't sound like something we're quite ready to have."

A smile pulled at the corners of Kirk's mouth. "Can I tell him you sympathize with him?" he asked.

"No," the doctor said firmly.

"Come on, Bones, lighten up," Jim urged gently, "I was with him on the Bridge when you answered my hail. No matter what he says, he was... relieved."

McCoy grunted again and looked thoughtfully at the floor. He wasn't sure how he would have endured what Kirk and Spock had just been through. How would he have coped with Spock's death? With finding Kirk's body? After four years he had reached a point where he couldn't bear to lose either of them; and he already considered death a personal enemy.

He refilled his glass and Jim's and then raised his in a salute.

"Spock," he said.

Jim nodded. "Spock;" and they both drank.

The comm unit on his desk buzzed and Daphne stirred restlessly. Spock crossed the short distance to answer it, quickly.

"Spock," he said.

"McCoy," came the reply.

There was a long, heavy silence and Spock wondered again why it seemed so easy to argue with McCoy and never to say the things that mattered.

"Jim told you what happened?" he asked, finally.

"Yes," McCoy answered.

"Where is he now?"

"I made him eat something and sent him back to his quarters with strict orders to rest. If he took what I gave him, he's asleep."

"Good," Spock said, shortly.

"You told Daphne?"

"Yes."

"And she is?"

"Sleeping."

Silence pulsed between them again. Then McCoy asked, "What about you? Are you all right?"

Spock stopped himself just before giving a glib reply. McCoy was asking sincerely. He deserved a sincere answer.

"I need to rest, and meditate."

There was a grunt of surprise across the comm channel, as if even McCoy had been expecting the glib retort instead of an answer.

"Then let me add food to that, and that's my prescription. We're on are way to a starbase, not an emergency and Jim left Sulu in command on the Bridge."

Spock lifted an eyebrow but kept that reaction to himself. McCoy went on, "So no one needs you for a while. You just stay in your quarters with your wife and put out the 'do not disturb sign.'"

"The Enterprise does not have such signs, Doctor," Spock observed.

"You know what I mean," McCoy grumbled, sounding more like he usually did. There was a pause, then, "Spock?"

"Yes?"

"Thank you... for getting back. McCoy out."

Spock heard the sound of the channel closing before he could make any kind of reply. He stood quietly for a moment, thinking. Daphne stirred again, which drew his attention, but not because it was anything unusual for her to move in her sleep. Even on a peaceful night Daphne slept like a lematya with a knot tied in its tail. He watched her now only because he was grateful to be able to do so. Once she had quieted again he sat down at the desk and turned on the computer station. He found the dusty and now rather battered tricorder he had retrieved from the Cargo Bay and pulled the disc from it.

He held the disc in his fingers for a moment, considering. It contained the record of eveything they had gone through, including the extensive file on the alien's language and technologies. It was proof if they ever needed it. It might be the difference between war and peace if they encountered that race again. Coming to a decision he slipped it into the opening on the main computer and encrypted a file for the eyes of the Captain and First Officer only. He watched it begin to download and began to realize that the last few days were catching up to him. As he had told the Captain, neither of them was indestructable. The computer didn't need him to finish its work

Spock stood and dimmed the lights. Quietly he made his way to the section of his quarters that held his meditation pad and his bed. He studied the pad for a moment, but he had told McCoy he needed to rest and meditate and it seemed it really would have to be in that order. His bed at the moment was a tangle of limbs, blond hair and red sheets.

As he gently worked the sheets out from under and around his wife he reflected that there had once been a time in his life when his bed had always been neatly made and waiting for him. Those days had ended apparently... But he found he didn't mind. Daphne tossed again and murmured a protest but settled down as he carefully lowered the sheets again. He tossed his robe aside and slipped in beside her. He started to fit his body around hers but she rolled over to face him. Curling up in a ball she rested her lower legs against his thighs and her head against his chest. Her arms, she tucked in close, laying her open hands on his ribs.

Perhaps, he thought, he had finally endured something that had tested his limits. At the moment, he was content to hold her. He wrapped a hand lightly around her wrist, where her pulse beat - human slow but strong and steady against his palm- and let his consciousness fade into sleep to the rhythm of that lullaby.


End file.
